Swallow

by Theanna Bischoff

  She leaned back in her chair. “You can’t just replace people.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You can’t just replace people. Having you didn’t fix things with your father. You having this baby isn’t going to replace your sister. And, whoever the father is. . .it doesn’t work that way.”

  I tensed. Pulled in my abdominal muscles. Suck it in! Carly used to say, right before a photo was taken. I want to look back years later and think I was skinny! “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told her.

  Milk lined my mother’s upper lip. She wiped it off. “You look exactly like I did when I first got pregnant. I can see it in your face. Except you’re so skinny, so the fact that you’re preggo is more obvious.”

  How long was I planning on hiding it from her? A couple more months and baggy shirts wouldn’t hide it anymore. “I’m not trying to replace Carly,” I said. “I didn’t plan this.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well — ”

  “You plan everything. You don’t make mistakes. Miss High and Mighty. Always judging me. And Richard. And your sister.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “You and whoever this guy is. . .you’re just going to go off together, have this baby, move out. . .”

  My insides squeezed; a fist closing. “There is no guy. It’s me, on my own. I fuck up too, you know. I make mistakes! I’m human!” I clenched my hands, my nails digging into my palm.

  She rocked back in her chair the way Carly used to. At the dinner table, growing up, I’d hooked my foot around the leg beam of Carly’s chair to prevent her from rocking, to prevent Dick from having something more to yell at her about, to prevent her from falling backwards and cracking her head open.

  Nobody likes a pussy.

  My mother rocked forward. The chair landed on its front legs. Skidded a little bit. “So what do you plan to do then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Again, she rocked back, tilting the chair on its back legs. It balanced there, unsteadily. “Well, I guess now you know how it feels.”

  “How what feels?”

  “How I feel.” She scratched her scalp. “How I felt, all those years. When your asshole father left, the two of you girls, needing me, always needing me — and then Richard. . .” She got up, put her plate in the sink. It clattered against the other dirty dishes. “I’m going to bed.”

  &My mother began to bring me a series of small gifts, purchased with money I didn’t know she had. First, a set of days of the week underwear she said she thought were funny. As kids, Carly and I each had a set, each day with a different colour; I wore mine in sequence, while Carly insisted on wearing Tuesday over and over because she liked pink the best.

  First underwear, then white-chocolate-covered pretzels, a notepad and pen bearing a Realtor’s logo and slogan, and finally, a tube of hemorrhoid cream.

  “When I was pregnant with you, I got hemorrhoids so bad it hurt to shit,” she said. “Figured you could use some.”

  Neither my mother nor Richard had officially filed for divorce. The lease for the house remained in Dickhead’s name, which meant he was legally obligated to pay it, but he closed his account and their joint account. I knew when he called; if I saw his number on call display, I picked up and hung up before my mother got a chance to answer. But I had to delete the call display feature from our phone plan to try to save money. I made enough to pay for rent, and put groceries on my credit card, paid only the balance. Sometimes, when she answered, I would pick up and listen and try to breathe as quietly as possible.

  “I have a pregnant daughter to take care of,” she barked. As though she were taking care of me.

  “Well, don’t expect my money to pay for anymore of your brats!” Richard barked.

  I kept expecting him to come and kick us out. Or, maybe, take my mother back and just kick me out. In the night, I awoke to noises, imagining Dick shuffling around in the kitchen, as he had done years before. My mother, who hadn’t worked the last few years, should have claimed alimony.

  “Don’t you think you should file to make your divorce legal?” I asked, while my mother pulled honey oat muffins out of the oven. The smell wafted over the smell of cleaning products; earlier, she’d had a burst of energy and had scrubbed out the fridge, thrown out all our expired eggs and mouldy bagels.

  She closed the oven door with a slam, held the hot muffin tin in one gloved hand. “Seriously, lay off! ”

  I wanted to make it permanent.

  &Carly loved the Disney movie Peter Pan, which she made me watch with her ad nauseam, until the soundtrack echoed in my head all day: “You can fly! You can fly! You can fly! You can fly! You can fly!”

  “This movie is racist, you know,” I said.

  Carly wore one of her nightgowns and, like Wendy, read to her menagerie of Beanie Babies. When I came home in a grumpy mood once, when a boy I had a crush on started dating one of my classmates, she wiggled her fingers over my head and told me she was sprinkling pixie dust on me, and that I should think happy thoughts. I’d shoved her away, told her to get lost.

  Lost.

  Maybe she saw herself like Wendy, but now, I saw her as one of the little Lost Boys. In the first edition of Peter Pan, the Lost Boys were infants who’d fallen out of their strollers and, when seven days passed and no one returned to claim them, their souls flew off to Neverland.

  Carly would never grow up. Would never have a career, own a car, make babies. My beautiful sister, her body crushed and compacted under the wheels of a train.

  Stefany Beale, disappeared late one September afternoon, obviously dead, her body lost, too, buried or stashed somewhere, decomposing in secret, becoming less and less. Disappearing altogether.

  And then, the last of the Lost Girls, my sister-who-would-never-be, not-even-born. At eighteen weeks, she would have weighed half a pound, measured about five inches long. Eighteen-week-old fetuses go through the motions of crying but, without air, don’t make a sound. I wondered if she cried as she slid away, as blood began to trickle down my mother’s legs and slip down the shower drain.

  Eighteen weeks pregnant, I lay on the ultrasound table as my obstetrician slid the monitor across my abdomen, still small enough that I could hide the baby behind baggy shirts; play pretend.

  What the fuck was I going to do? I had a temporary job, lived in my mother’s basement, had an invalid adult to take care of, and my child’s father wanted nothing to do with me or his baby. A child’s father who wanted nothing to do with it. Where had I heard that before?

  Joel agreed to pay child support. Of course he did. “I’m not going to avoid my legal obligations,” he said. “You can let me know when it’s born, and my lawyer will draw something up.” So clean.

  “Congratulations,” my doctor said, and pressed down with the monitor on the space just below my belly button. “You’re having a girl.”

  “Just one?” I asked.

  My doctor smiled. “Just one.”

  There was an old lady who swallowed a cow.

  I don’t know how she swallowed a cow!

  She swallowed the cow to catch the goat.

  She swallowed the goat to catch the dog.

  She swallowed the dog to catch the cat.

  She swallowed the cat to catch the bird.

  She swallowed the bird to catch the spider

  That wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.

  She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

  I don’t know why she swallowed a fly

  Perhaps she’ll die.

  &Patrick emails me a few days into January 2009, another year Carly will never see. I can’t imagine her any older than nineteen. She keeps popping into my memory as a seven-year-old, her hair and skin streaked with multicoloured magic marker ink, twirling on the spot, frenzied in anticipation of a Halloween sugar rush.

  “Darcy! Darcy! I’m a rainbow!”

  I’m going to be in T.O. for a few days. Would love to see you
. Andrew told me you were back at your mom’s. I have some time in the evening of the 5th. Not sure what your schedule is like but hope you can make it. Café Piazza @ 6:30?

  I stride west towards Ossington. The baby inside me kicks, hiccups, then kicks again. For the last week, she’s pressed herself against the front of me so that I can make out the different parts of her, like pieces in a puzzle. Foot, elbow, bum. But as I gain momentum, she quiets, introspective, huddling inside me to keep warm.

  I arrive too early, and my wandering takes me in circles, past the old brick houses, past the skeleton of a snow angel. Carly could never get her snow angels right. Every time she struggled to get up, she’d leave footprints behind, marring the angel’s wings. Stomping out the angel’s heart.

  I sit down on a frozen bus bench to rest, put my hands on the underside of my belly, where my daughter hides. The mottled grey sky hints at snow. Exhausted, not used to walking such lengths, I surrender my head into my hands, elbows on my thighs. My body is not just mine anymore. I am already hers. She dictates the choices I make, already. I shape myself around her, as I will continue to do, after she exits. A role I know well.

  The physical exertion places two thumbs on either side of my temples and pushes. My head aches. I put my elbows on my knees and rest my head in my hands for a moment, breathing in and out. I have not felt sick since the early months. The only pregnant belly I ever felt was my mother’s. This time, I feel things from the inside out.

  I stand up, feeling the pressure of the baby pushing up against my ribs. I inhale.

  Then, looking up, I see it: pink curtains, and behind them, the partially obscured, stoic face of the Virgin Mary.

  I call Patrick.

  He answers after just two rings and his voice sounds familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, slightly higher in pitch. Is he wondering whether I’m calling to cancel? The call happens so fast neither one of us acknowledges the strangeness of suddenly hearing the other’s voice again after so long. I tell him the address. He knows the area well but says he’s never actually seen the place. Pink curtains and the Virgin Mary don’t ring any bells.

  “I’ll find it,” he assures me. “I’m probably only five or ten minutes away.”

  I hang up and cross the street, open the door on the main floor of the little walk-up. One flight of rickety steps leads to the second floor. I ascend them slowly, my centre of gravity off-kilter, my joints sore from all the walking. I rub the small of my back, massage a stitch that has formed there.

  A small, elderly woman greets me at the top. A man I assume is her husband buzzes by with a plate of steaming, dark green vegetables. Two other couples already sit, consuming meals. This tiny, nondescript restaurant is perhaps not so unknown after all. From the back, the old man looks kind of like Papi, lithe and gangly.

  “Table for two?” The woman says, and I nod.

  “Yes, thanks.”

  Then Patrick comes up the stairs, two at a time. “Sorry, I was just parking,” he calls ahead of himself. Then he reaches the top of the stairs and his eyes register confusion. His short hair has grown out a bit, like how he styled it when we first met. His hair falls in his eyes, and he makes a motion to push the strands away. He looks more relaxed. I smile, maybe a little too widely.

  “Come, come! Table for two!” The little woman gestures for us, puts her hand on my back, ushering us forward. “Sit, you must be so tired and hungry!” She pulls a chair out at a little table with a vinyl tablecloth the colour of split pea soup.

  “Did you order already?” Patrick asks, when she leaves. He keeps looking at my big belly.

  “Long story.” I rest my hands on top of the table, and he copies the action, puts his hands out to touch mine. I wonder if he is checking for a ring. I put my hands down in my lap. “How was London?”

  “Great. Loved it. Super rainy, though, and humid. Kind of reminded me of Toronto that way, but even worse. I still catch myself saying some things the way they do in Britain. Like how I still ask for a lemonade sometimes when I go to a pub. In London that means a Sprite or a 7UP. Sometimes I forget and then they bring me actual lemonade. And I lived in this great little flat on campus, a tiny bedroom with just a bed and a little single stove and bathroom, totally claustrophobic, so I used to go wander around a lot, just to get fresh air. Anyway, one day I found this little church. I went in just to check it out and sat in there for like, an hour, and nobody else came in. You couldn’t hear a thing. I just sat in there, doing nothing, but it was nice, very spiritual. On my way out I said a prayer for your sister.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “So what about you? When did you move back to Toronto?”

  “Um, right after. Right after you left. Pretty much.”

  He looks a little stricken. “Was it because of — ”

  “No. Just — I had my reasons.”

  “Living with your mom?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “She and Richard are getting a divorce. We moved out of the house a couple months ago. We have a little apartment in the Annex.”

  “Do you see a lot of Aubrey now that you’re back?”

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  “It’s complicated,” I say. “She’s getting married, though. Or — I guess she already is married.”

  “Aubrey? Really? Huh. Well, I guess everybody changes, eventually.”

  We sit in silence. Patrick takes the pink Sweet’N Lows from the sugar container on the table and separates them from the white sucrose packages, makes them all face the same way. Then our food arrives. It feels fast but maybe we have sat here awkwardly longer than I’ve realized.

  The old lady has brought me roast beef, three slabs of it, steaming on a plate beside a swirl of mashed potatoes, all of it soaked in gravy. I’d never been a huge fan of roast beef; our stepfather’s rendition always came out of the oven chewy, overcooked.

  “Healthy protein for the baby!” the old woman announces. She has a plate of pasta for Patrick, tiny ravioli pillows smothered in something green — pesto, maybe. She smiles at us. “You two are a very nice couple. You will be very, very happy together.”

  Patrick smirks, just slightly. If she sees his grin, the old woman doesn’t let on. She puts her wizened hands on my round belly. “Hmm, little girl, I think. Not too much longer.” She pauses. “And I think. . .red hair. Yes, definitely, she will have red hair. Very fiery, this one.”

  The baby stays motionless under her hands. “Thank you,” I say.

  “Enjoy your meal,” she instructs.

  We sit back in our chairs. I spread my napkin out in my lap, trying to figure out how to drape it with the baby in the way.

  “In high school I had this terrible crush on a girl with red hair. What was her name? Kristen something. I once had to go over to her house to do a science project, but she had the world’s most annoying little sister who kept butting in. Between Kristen’s red hair and her irritating little sister, I could barely think straight. I think I bombed the project. Which, of course, I hated, because I couldn’t stand getting anything lower than an A.” He smiles, remembering. “Beale. Yeah. Kristen Beale.”

  I stop fiddling with the napkin. “What?”

  “Kristen Beale.”

  “What was the little sister’s name?”

  “Mmm. . .I dunno, Darce, it was a long time ago.” He sticks his fork into the pasta, swirls it around a bit. It releases another whorl of steam.

  “Was it Stefany?”

  He cocks his head. “Yeah, that sounds right. Did you know them, too?”

  “No,” I say, “I just. . .when I was in Grade Six, this girl in my neighbourhood went missing. I obsessed over it for years. Her name was Stefany Beale, she had red hair, and she had a sister named Kristen. I’m sure of it.” It all comes out fast. “And now you’re telling me she somehow returned from the dead to bug her older sister years later? Not possible.”

  Patrick puts his fork down. “Really? Weird. Well, I don’t know what to te
ll you, but she was alive. Alive and obnoxious. Trust me.”

  My heart has quickened. I force my lips to smile.

  “Hey,” he says, and pushes his plate forward a little bit. “Want to switch?”

  “All right.” I take a bite of the meal intended for Patrick. The pesto burns my tongue.

  It cannot possibly be another Stefany Beale — can it? I try to remember, but Patrick has started talking again, and I don’t really hear what he’s saying. Stefany. Stefany alive, maybe. And Carly, here, in this restaurant. Here and breathing and eating chocolate cake with a pudding centre, gooey-eyed across from the boy who would later leave her. I wonder what the old woman told her would happen to her in the future. I know she believed it.

  &In a small, covert restaurant, behind pink panelled curtains and under the solemn gaze of the Mother Mary, it is not my own future revealed to me, but rather the future of a girl whose death I once dreamed, whose body I left buried under the anonymous earth.

  As soon as I get home, it takes only a few minutes of digging around on the Internet in the online newspaper archives, a few dollars on my credit card. Words that have existed all along, any time I’d wanted to look.

  * * *

  Missing girl found after three years;

  Case of parental abduction

  [Ontario Edition]

  Toronto Star — Toronto, Ont.

  Author: A. Sperling

  Date: June 16, 1995

  Start Page: A.25

  Section: NEWS

  Text Word Count: 485

  For almost three years, Angela Vergara (nee Beale) did not know what happened to her daughter, Stefany Beale, after the nine-year-old disappeared while playing outside one afternoon. That is, until she got a call from the police department in Lethbridge, Alberta, this past Wednesday.

  Police located Beale when the now almost twelve-year-old admitted her true identity to a classmate. Beale, who was raised in Toronto by a single mother, and who has an older half-sister, Kristen, was abducted in September, 1992, by her biological father, James Allen Kramer.

  Police had originally ruled out Kramer as a suspect because Mrs.