Her eyes dart back and forth between their scowling faces.
— Do you, Emily?
The elders’ usual response to a difficult question: another question. She tosses her hair and takes four deep breaths, pushes her hair away from her blue eyes, and stares back at Brother Wilde and Brother Davies. They shift some more in their chairs. She stands up.
— Yes, I do. If there is such a thing.
The two elders suck in their breath at the same time and both lean back, then slightly forward toward her. They begin to talk at once, quickly, and she cannot understand either of them. Then they both stop and each motions for the other to speak first. Emily takes this opportunity to interrupt.
— I know what really happened.
Again Brother Wilde and Brother Davies exchange glances.
— What do you mean, Emily?
She feels her eyes narrow.
— I know what you did, and I have proof.
Emily waves Lenora’s letter at them.
— I know everything.
They don’t respond.
If the District Overseer finds out how they handled Lenora’s situation, they could lose their positions as elders. Maybe she should contact him, and let him read it. No. She shakes her head. Inevitably, everyone would find out, and Lenora would hate that. Worse, the overseer would probably stand up for the elders, and claim they did everything right. They might not even get in trouble.
— What happened to her is your fault. You made her feel trapped, like she had no choice. She didn’t know what else to do. You did this to her. I know, and Jehovah God knows.
— What do you have there, Emily?
— The truth.
— Did your sister write that?
— It’s mine.
— You’d best pass that over to us. I’m sure it only brings back painful memories for you. Brother Wilde hoists himself from his chair, his hand outstretched, and takes a step toward her.
— No.
Emily shoves a chair between her and Brother Wilde.
— Hand it over, Emily.
Brother Wilde stands in front of the door, while Brother Davies twists in his seat and looks toward the back door, as though contemplating whether or not he should block that one too.
— Never.
She doesn’t wait for them to dismiss her. She jumps up and runs out the back door and down the hall toward the exit. They yell after her, and the floor shakes with the weight of their heavy footfalls behind her. She is in the cloak room now and will soon be outside, where it’s almost dark.
— Stop right there, young lady! Brother Davies, the heavier of the two, is behind Brother Wilde and calls after her.
She keeps running, but Brother Wilde is close and reaches out to grab her. He gets her sleeve and grips it tightly. Brother Davies lumbers toward them, almost caught up. Emily’s eyes dart left then right and she knows that if Brother Davies reaches them, she will be outnumbered, and they will have her. And Lenora’s letter.
Emily shrugs out of her jacket and sprints outside.
— Hey!
She doesn’t hear them running down the sidewalk behind her, but she doesn’t want to turn around to check and risk slowing down. She runs and runs and then hears a car start in the Kingdom Hall parking lot. She tucks the envelope down the waistband of her jeans and pulls her shirt over it, then cuts into the next backyard she passes, jumping over kids’ toys and bikes and pushing through thin, sharp hedges.
She runs and climbs fences and runs and falls and runs and ignores the burning in her chest. She zigzags through side streets, cuts through more yards, and hides behind parked cars whenever anyone drives past her. By the time she reaches the outskirts of town, the sky has darkened and the wind has died down and Emily slows to a walk. She walks and walks and she doesn’t know where she’s going, but she doesn’t care. A light rain begins to mist her thin arms and she shivers. She is far from her house, where the elders are probably drinking instant coffee in the living room with her parents, waiting for her. Her father is most likely apologizing, her mother, sipping sloppily from her travel mug and refusing to either speak or leave the room so they can talk about her. As Emily imagines the scene, she forgets to hide from the passing cars and there is a crunch of gravel behind her. She spins around and is about to run across the lawn of the nearest house, when she hears her name.
— Hey, you need a lift?
Emily stops, turns, then shields her eyes from the glare of the headlights. It’s not the elders. She puts her head down and rests, her hands on her knees, and decides right then that she can’t go back home. Not that night, anyway. She wraps her arms around herself, then checks that the envelope is still safe in her pants. It is. The driver is waiting, his window still rolled down, a hesitant half-smile balanced on his lips.
— Yes. Emily nods up and down, up and down, too many times.
— I do. Thank you. Yes.
She looks up into the purple sky above her head and smiles. For a moment, everything is silent and perfect and for once, she is not afraid.
She opens the passenger door and slides in next to her uncle Tyler.
— Let’s go.
42
FOR A FULL DECADE, I was terrified of throwing up.
They say Joan Baez had the same problem, that she’d do anything to keep from triggering it. I could relate to that. A checklist of what to avoid, memorized and learned the hard way: boats, roller coasters, drunkenness.
I was convinced that if I ever vomited again, it would mean the loss of control, everything would change, my world would dissolve and another, scarier one would take its place. Again. It would mean the loss of everything I knew.
And so I spent years concentrating on breathing deeply, placing one foot in front of the other, exhaling. After all that, I had risked it. I had gotten drunk, puked on the sidewalk, and made it, intact, back to my apartment. Nothing calamitous had happened. My stomach was still sore and heaving when I collapsed onto my couch, but I had stopped vomiting. I drank as many glasses of water as I could, and started to feel better.
It was then that I realized I was sick of being afraid. I decided that that day was to be a day of lasts and of firsts. It would be the last day I would be scared of my own reactions, the last time I would allow the familiar burning surge of fear in my stomach. It started with the early morning hours of first-time sex, and would end with, for the first time, making it to the other side.
Don’t you want to know why I’m doing this?
I waited. Nothing.
This is your last chance. Don’t try to change my mind. It’s something I have to do.
Still, silence. Never had she made me wait; she had pounced on our dialogues like a hungry, feral cat. She’d had no one else.
Then just like that, it was over. For the first time in ten years, there was no response. She really was gone.
She made the ultimate sacrifice — her life, for truth. An escape from hypocrisy. A vengeful refusal to surrender. For a decade, that’s what I’d clung to.
But maybe it was meaningless. Maybe hers was another senseless, preventable suicide. A statistic. Maybe her strength was in fact her weakness. Maybe neither of us had really understood what we were up against.
And maybe it didn’t matter anymore.
THE ROPE LADDER SWAYED AS I climbed. One hand, one foot, one hand, one foot. Don’t look down. When I reached the top, I felt as though I was swaying, but there was no wind up there, and couldn’t have been. I steeled myself.
What I would have told her was, I wasn’t doing this for her; I was doing it for both of us.
— This is it. Almost there. Don’t think about it. Just keep going.
I pulled myself up and stood, my toes curled around the edge. My eyes closed, I held out my arms, palms up, a supplicant. I breathed in, then out, in
, out, and felt nothing. Perfect. Then I opened my eyes. People say to never look down, just straight ahead, keep only your goal in mind, nothing else.
I looked down.
Blurred shapes moved in what looked to be synchronized, darting waltzes below. A loud buzz surged through me and I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them wide.
— Here’s to us, Lenora.
And then I stepped from the platform.
THANK YOU TO THE IMPOSTORS — my sporadic writing group — whose support and feedback helped to get this project out of the shadows. I am especially grateful to the inimitable Julia Tausch for her friendship, enthusiasm, encouragement and editorial insights throughout several drafts of this book. Thanks for keeping the faith.
With gratitude, I acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council, whose Writers’ Reserve and Works in Progress grants bought me some much-needed time to write.
Thanks to misFit editor Michael Holmes for taking on this novel, and to all the talented, dedicated folks at ECW Press.
JENNIFER LOVEGROVE is the author of the poetry collections The Dagger Between Her Teeth and I Should Never Have Fired the Sentinel. Her writing has been published widely, and she studied creative writing at York University. She divides her time between downtown Toronto and rural Haliburton. This is her first novel.
Copyright © Jennifer LoveGrove, 2013
Published by ECW Press
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Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2
416-694-3348 / [email protected]
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
LoveGrove, Jennifer, author
Watch how we walk : a novel / Jennifer LoveGrove.
ISBN 978-1-77090-469-9 (ePUB)
Also issued as: 978-1-77090-468-2 (PDF); 978-1-77041-127-2 (pbk.)
i. Title.
PS8573.O8754W37 2013 C813’.6 C2013-902486-7
Editor for the press: Michael Holmes/a misFit book
Cover design and photography: David A. Gee
Author photo: Sharon Harris
Type: Troy Cunningham
The publication of Watch How We Walk has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $157 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and by the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,681 individual artists and 1,125 organizations in 216 communities across Ontario for a total of $52.8 million. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
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