Look at You Now

by Liz Pryor

  “No.”

  “Damn, I want to know what California is like. You ever been there?”

  “No, I’m from Chicago.”

  “Oh, that’s pretty far away.”

  “I guess.”

  “Do you live in one of those big city buildings?”

  “No, no, I’m from a suburb, we live in a house. What about you?”

  “Oh, I lived in a lot of places, never a house. Always around here somewhere, never been anywhere else. Tell me about your life, Liz. What’s it like?” Her eyes got big.

  “It’s just a life,” I said. I didn’t know what to say, it was just normal to me.

  “Come on, give me somethin’. What’s your bedroom like?”

  “A room with a bed.”

  “Liz.” Tilly was impatient. “What color is it? What does it have in it?”

  “Okay. It’s light blue and white, I guess, it has a brass bed, and a makeup table at the window. Eyelet curtains, the wallpaper has little flowers, there’s a desk.”

  “Jesus shit—I wish I could see it.”

  “Yeah, it’s nice.”

  “Do you have a backyard at your house?”

  “Uh-huh, a big one. We used to have a horse in it, actually.”

  “What the hell, really? Do you live on a fucking farm?”

  “No, just a regular house in a regular neighborhood, kinda weird that we had a horse. We moved into this house when my parents got divorced five years ago. My mom is the most non-animal person in the world, she can’t even pet the dog. So she finds this great house with a big backyard, that has a pond, and swings and a barn and a horse. The house came with the horse.”

  “The house came with a goddamn horse?”

  “Yeah, and no one in my family knew anything about horses, I mean nothing. None of us knew shit!”

  “So why’d she get a house with a horse, then?”

  I’d never thought about that before. I was suddenly noticing a bunch of things about my life that had never seemed strange or remarkable before, but I saw now that they clearly were. “I have no idea. Maybe because she liked the house?”

  “Is it a nice house?”

  “Yeah, really nice.”

  “What’s the horse’s name?”

  “Scooter. He was brown with a long white line running down his nose. So we move in, and we’re all excited about the barn and the horse but we have no idea what or how to do anything. So there’s this neighbor girl we meet, Leann. She comes over one day and tells us she loves and knows everything about horses. I mean she knew everything, how to bridle and saddle him and clean and feed him and take care of the barn. She was so good with the horse. But when she wasn’t there, Scooter was feisty. It’s like the horse knew when Leann wasn’t around and he behaved badly … and mean.”

  “It’s because horses are smart and have to trust the people around them.”

  “Really?”

  “I mean, yeah, I know that from this show I watched on TV. If you’re scared of the horse, the horse knows it, so then it takes over like it’s the boss. I can’t believe you had a fucking horse at your house. Why’d you get rid of it? ’Cause it was mean?”

  “Kind of. After a while Scooter’s barn was like knee-high in horse poop and old hay. We’d grown tired of it all, and Leann stopped coming by so much. So one morning at like five A.M., Scooter got out of the gate that kept him in the field and barn area and was eating the leaves off the tree between our house and the neighbor’s house, just chomping away, walking around the yard.”

  “Shit,” Tilly said. Her eyes went so wide they looked like they might pop out of her face. She’d cozied up close to me on the chair and was looking at me like she was watching a scary movie. I continued the story.

  “So the old lady neighbor calls on the phone. She asks my mom to get the horse off her tree. My mom wakes us up and asks us to get Scooter back in the barn, but none of us wanted to do it, we were too scared. We were arguing, shouting at each other back and forth until my mom got so mad she said she’d just do it herself. She went outside in her little blue nightgown. She’s a small lady, much littler than me, like five foot two. She’s never been around a horse. So she’s standing kind of behind Scooter, making the come-here-horsey sound, trying to get him back in the field. Then the horse picks up its hind leg and kicks my mom so hard in the chest she flies a few feet back and then lands on the ground. I thought she was dead.”

  “HOLY SHIT.”

  “My sisters and I screamed, like really screamed. We go running down the stairs and outside to help her. We were so freaked. We called our grandfather and he came right over, put Scooter in the barn, and took our mom to the hospital.”

  “Was your mom okay?”

  “Yeah, she broke a rib I think. She had bruises everywhere. The next day my grandfather came back over with a horse truck, walked Scooter up onto the ramp, didn’t say anything to any of us, and we never saw Scooter again.”

  Tilly was looking at me in awe. Nellie peeked her head in the laundry room with a mouth full of food.

  “What’s going on?” Nellie asked. “What are you doing? Is Liz telling a story?”

  Tilly turned to her. “You missed it.”

  “Fuck, was it a good one?”

  “It was the best one I’ve heard.”

  “Fuck you both. You’re telling me that fucking story later, you hear me, Liz?” Nellie left, and we switched the clothes from the washers to the dryers. Tilly and I headed to the nearly empty cafeteria. Dinner was almost over. Tilly grabbed a disgusting-looking sandwich, and then the woman behind the counter loaded her up with something that resembled macaroni and cheese with brown chunks in it. I took milk and spread peanut butter onto a piece of stale white bread—it was still the only thing I could stand. We sat at the end of one of the tables while the cafeteria lady swept the floor around us.

  “Your life sounds exciting,” Tilly said. The yellow mac and cheese thing smelled so bad I couldn’t eat my peanut butter.

  “It’s not exciting. Maybe compared to here, but it’s just normal.”

  “Come on, it’s not fucking normal. Horses, ponds, tree swings. Get real, Liz. That’s not normal.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what’s not normal, Till, is the fucking food here.”

  “What, this? You never had mac and cheese with chunks of cat food in it?”

  “Tilly, so gross, oh my God.”

  “Well they call it mac and cheese with tuna. We call it 9Lives mac-shit. You get used to it. Here, try a bite.” She waved the chunk of cat food on her fork in my face and laughed at my reaction.

  “What, it doesn’t smell great to you? You just have to try it, Liz.”

  She got up and started chasing me around the room with the fork of smelly food. I ducked under a table. We were laughing our asses off. The cafeteria lady told us to be quiet and leave. Tilly stopped, put her hand on her hip, and said, “Simmer yourself, Jeanette … we’re just havin’ a laugh.” Jeanette tried to shoo us out with the broom. “Just trying to get her to take a bite of your famous 9Lives mac and cheese,” Tilly said.

  Jeanette fired back,“That is some grade A tuna in there, young lady.”

  “Oh yeah, grade A? Did you hear that, Liz?” We ran out, still laughing. I started to head for the stairs. Tilly pulled on my sweater. “Did you forget something?”

  “What?”

  “First fucking rule of laundry—don’t forget it!”

  We went back to the laundry room and pulled the warm clothes out of the dryer. Tilly grabbed a shirt, made sure I was watching, and then laid it on the table and carefully flattened out the wrinkles with her forearm. Then, like a hotel chambermaid, she folded the sleeves in just so, folded the shirt in half, and then in half again. She did that several times at the speed of light, and in seconds all my clothes were folded. She placed them back in the clean pillowcase, handed it to me, and bowed.

  “Impressive. Thanks, Till.”

  “My cousin used to work in a laundro
mat so it’s one thing I know how to do. Problem is, I don’t have enough clothes to have to do it for myself.” She laughed. I thought about her one shirt, and laughed. Next thing I knew, we were stopped in the hall, doubled over laughing. It was like when my sisters and I would start giggling in church and couldn’t stop. It went on for several minutes. I tried to get ahold of myself, but it was no use—we were having a full-on laughing attack. Every time we looked at each other we busted up. I finally made it back to my room, panting and exhausted. In all our laughing, for the first time in weeks, I’d forgotten about the bad stuff. I felt something I recognized from before—joy. And I wanted to hang on to it. I wanted to remember it, to hold it, to make sure it was real. But I just sat there for a moment, and felt it. Tilly had sparked something inside me. For the very first time, I began to believe that I might be okay at the end of all this.

  I watched the snow pouring down outside the window and noticed the outline of the circle I’d made earlier on the glass. I drew with my finger two eyes and a slight smiling mouth. And then I felt something weird going on in my stomach—not a pain, but a nudge. I lifted up my sweater, looked down at my big belly, and noticed something pushing from the inside. My stomach stuck out in one little spot. I softly held my finger against the nudge. It went away and then it came back. I pushed it again, and it pushed back. There was a baby in there, moving around. And for the first time I realized, I really didn’t want it to die.

  chapter 8

  A few days later, the girls were sleeping, but I was awake. It was late at night. I sat alone in the quiet phone booth. It felt like years of life had passed since I’d spoken to Daniel. There was screaming and music blaring through the other end of the phone. The music got louder as I waited for Daniel to come to the phone.

  “Liz?” he said. “Hey, how you doing? How is it?” My throat tightened. Maybe it was the phone booth—the place I’d cried so many times before—or maybe it was the sound of real life happening far away, without me. I ignored the tears as they rolled down my cheeks.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “I can barely hear you.”

  “It’s okay.” I raised my voice.

  “Where is the place?”

  “I’m in Indiana somewhere.”

  “Shit, hang on.” There were voices, and then I heard Daniel laugh. “Sorry, sorry, they’re having this stupid party thing on the hall. Remember my friend Aaron? He’s such a bonehead. He filled these trash cans with grain alcohol and Hawaiian Punch. Everyone is wasted.”

  The lightbulb was flickering on the ceiling of the phone booth. “Oh yeah, I remember him.”

  “Sorry. So what’s it like? You okay? Shit, hang on, yeah I know, shithead. Wait, Liz, what did you say?”

  “Nothing. You sound busy, Daniel… .”

  “No, no, it’s fine. We just finished midterms so everyone’s crazy.”

  “I guess I just wanted to say hi.” There was an awkward silence. I felt how starkly our lives had diverged.

  “Coming, man. Sorry, I guess I should maybe call you tomorrow or something. I’m on the hall phone here, ya know?”

  “It’s okay, I get it.”

  “I’m sorry about all this, Liz.”

  “It’s fine, I’ll talk to you later.”

  I hung up the phone and looked down at the names and initials scratched into the wooden counter where the phone sat and wondered about all the girls who had come and gone.

  I’d stopped counting exactly how many mornings had passed. Since I didn’t know exactly when I was leaving, it was pointless. I rarely knew what day it was, because it didn’t matter anymore. I had nowhere to go. I’d come to accept that this was my life, for now. It felt like the longest point A to point B I’d ever have to experience. There were a few unavoidable realities: I was going nowhere until the baby came. I would never feel like the person I used to be. And perhaps I would survive. I was beginning to understand that the experience of the facility would be a part of me forever. But my forever still felt like a pretty good thing. I had a lot waiting for me, and even more to look forward to. Most of the girls had no idea what their forever was even kind of going to look like. Many had to go back to juvie without their babies, a few had nowhere to go, and most of them didn’t have people in their lives like I had—people who could help remind them that everything would eventually be okay.

  • • • •

  My strange bulging body had gotten all tangled in my big T-shirt during the night. I kept my eyes shut as I struggled out of it and made my way to the dresser. I ignored the person in the bathroom mirror with the swollen boobs and sullen face. The lounge was dark and empty when I came through. The girls must have all gone to breakfast. The TV was blaring in the empty room. I walked over and flipped it off.

  “Hey,” a voice said. I turned around. Wren was sitting in the corner by the window.

  “Oh, sorry, I didn’t see you.”

  “It’s fine, leave it off.”

  “You all right?”

  “I don’t feel so good,” she said, making a face. Just then, weeble-wobble Alice hurried through the door with her loud ring of keys, carrying a big pile of newspapers and paper towels.

  “Well, well, well. The two girls who shouldn’t miss breakfast the most are sitting here in the dark. Perfect, juuuuust perfect.” She turned on the bright lights, grabbed a chair, and moved it near the chore board. “I’m assigning new chores, and I mean it that you girls gotta do them before school. No one listens to me around here.”

  “Wren doesn’t feel well,” I said to Alice.

  “Come here, Wren,” Alice said. “Am I so bad you can’t talk to me yourself?”

  “… Kind of,” Wren said. I admired Wren’s honesty. She, like most of the girls, said exactly what she thought. There was no guessing with them.

  “Come on, that’s not true. You can always come to me. What’s the problem?”

  “I’m bleeding.”

  “Bleeding bleeding?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, no problem. Liz, walk her down to the nurse for me, okay? And grab some food on your way. You girls have no idea how much better you’d feel if you ate your gosh-darned meals every day.”

  Wren and I headed out down to the basement. The nurse with the beehive told us to wait in the exam room for the doctor. It was the creepy room, with no windows. Wren’s scar looked more purple against her pale face in the strangely dark room. She ran her finger over the scar. I tried not to notice, but she looked at me.

  “You want to know how it happened?”

  “Okay.” I really did, actually.

  “My mom fell asleep at the wheel, but I didn’t die like some other people.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No, it used to, it’s just numb now. You ever been in a car accident?”

  I flashed back in my mind.

  I was about five years old and our whole family was getting ready to go ice-skating. My mom was flying around the house, trying to gather hats and coats and mittens, frantically piling ice skates at the front door. We kids walked circles around each other, searching for our things. Her friend was about to arrive in the big VW van with her own six kids to pick all of us up. We heard the loud familiar honk blasting from outside. Dorothy was crazed with so many of us—throwing coats, tying boots, wrapping scarves around necks, pushing us one after another out the door. I was the last one. She pulled me back by the hood of my puffy snowsuit and turned me around. In three seconds flat she tied the hood under my chin so hard I almost choked.

  “Mom … ouch!”

  “There,” she said. “And keep it tied, a warm head makes a warm child.” I waddled down the steps in my snowsuit and red snow boots and climbed into the van behind all the other kids. There were no seats left, so I sat on the floor with a few of the others. We were off, the van speeding down the street. The kids were bickering and pushing in the back—there were so many of us. I sat on the floor and tried to pull my too-tight hood off. Suddenl
y, we took a sharp right turn. A few kids fell off their seats, and out of nowhere the van door flew all the way open. I could see the street and houses outside buzzing by and then, like a Lincoln Log, I rolled out of the van and onto the street. Lying on my side, very still, all I could see were two headlights moving toward me. I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to watch if I got squashed. But I guess the car stopped in time.

  “Lizzie? Lizzie, can you hear me?” I opened my eyes and saw my mom kneeling over me on the road. She had a rare look of panic on her face.

  “I think so,” I said.

  “Thank Goooooodddddd.” Dorothy scooped me up and carried me with both arms out in front of her, like a sacrificial offering. She marched up to the nearest house, banged on the door with her boot, and asked the woman if we could come inside. She sat me down and checked my legs and arms and neck and back and feet, and then she looked at my face. I was holding my cheek in my hand. She untied the hood, pulled my hand off my cheek, and found a big scrape on the side of my face. She turned to the lady whose house we were in.

  “May we please borrow a stick of butter?”

  She unwrapped one end and then held it like a big fat crayon and began coloring my cheek with it.

  “There,” she said. “You’re going to be just fine. You could have cracked your head open, Liz. Your snowsuit saved your life; thank you for keeping your hood on.”

  • • • •

  I looked at Wren and the long scar on her face.

  “I fell out of a car once. I mean, I guess that’s an accident in a car. I rolled out of a van.”

  “You get hurt?”

  “Not really.”

  “When I’m older I can have an operation to make this scar not so bad.”

  “I don’t think it’s too bad.”

  The doctor finally walked in. Wren grabbed my hand. I could tell she was scared.

  “Which one of you is bleeding?” Wren raised her hand. He pointed to me and told me to wait outside. A few minutes later, Wren came out almost smiling.