Look at You Now

by Liz Pryor

  “It’s fine,” she said. “It’s normal, he said sometimes people have see-through, or breakthrough, something bleeding… .”

  “So he didn’t have to do anything?”

  “Nope.”

  Thank God. One less thing to worry about.

  • • • •

  Later that morning Tilly asked me, “What happened to Wren?” She was sitting in her usual spot, in the lounge.

  “She’s fine, she had some bleeding. Dr. Dick said it’s normal.”

  Alice was marching around the room, trying to get the girls to do chores. Nellie put her hands on her hips in defiance.

  “Alice, I ain’t fuckin’ changing lightbulbs. Go ask the doctor, see what he’d say, I’m not gettin’ on no ladder.”

  “It’s a step stool, Nellie, and watch your attitude.” I was still floored at the way the girls spoke to the adults. Alice continued, “Now, all you guys, get on outta here and go to school. None of you keeps track of the time. You’re like babies yourselves.”

  • • • •

  It was still cold, and snow still covered the grounds. Going up to school felt like entering a time-passing torture chamber. Maryann sat reading by herself, and most of the girls were nodding off as usual. Tilly handed me a piece of paper.

  “Let’s do that thing we did the other day, Liz. You put the letters in.” She was talking about word searches; I’d made a few for the girls, just like the ones in the books my mom brought for us on long car rides. The waiting reminded me of how I’d hated waiting for anything else in life, times a thousand. After more doing nothing, three hours later, we were heading back down the hill. Tilly and I held Nellie’s arms to make sure she didn’t fall and roll down the hill. When we were back inside the facility building, Nellie hollered, as usual, “Yo, CHIEF, whattttt isssss up?”

  Chief turned to us and flashed a big smile. “Well look who it is, the three pregnant stooges. Liz, you got a very white-lookin’ visitor in Ms. Graham’s office.”

  “Is her mom here?” Tilly asked.

  “It’s either her mom or the goddamn queen of England.” My stomach dropped from excitement. I’d almost forgotten. The door to Ms. Graham’s office opened.

  “I want to meet her first,” Nellie said.

  “Fuck that, I’m meeting her first,” Tilly said.

  “Girls, language, please, you can both meet her.” Ms. Graham stepped out in the hall, then my mom stepped out behind her. She had on her long red Ralph Lauren wool coat with the black velvet collar and a studded brooch pinned to the lapel. Her black patent leather boots shined under the fluorescent lights. She did look like a queen. She looked at me and smiled. I walked over and hugged her; she squeezed me hard.

  “Hi, Liz,” she said. I couldn’t believe she was really here.

  “Hi, Mom.” She held my face with both hands and then hugged me again. Her eyes moved to Tilly, and then to Nellie. I turned to follow her gaze, and suddenly it was like I was seeing them for the first time too. I saw Nellie’s boils again, the way they covered her whole face. Part of Tilly’s naked belly was sticking out the bottom of her shirt, her big floppy shoes were untied, and you could barely see her eyes through her long, stringy bangs. Dorothy looked back at me; I smiled.

  “Mom, I want you to meet these guys. This is Tilly, and this is Nellie.”

  Dorothy tried to hide her shock. I could tell what she was thinking. She took a deep breath and responded, long and slow, “Well, hellooo girls, it is veeeeerrrry nice to meet both of you.”

  “Holy shit, you look just like Liz but older, how you doin’?” Nellie blurted out.

  “I’m verrrry wellll, thank you, and you?”

  “Me? I guess I’m okay except for this big-ass stomach of mine.” Nellie patted the top of her stomach, and then took the broken taped glasses off her face and started to clean them with her shirt. Dorothy looked away.

  “Liz, dear, why don’t we gather your things for tonight? We’ll be staying at a hotel, you’ll need some clothes. Ms. Graham has gotten me all caught up.”

  We all stood for an awkward moment, until Tilly grabbed Nellie’s hand and said, “We gotta get back. You coming to the lounge, Liz?”

  “Yeah, Till, we’ll be there in a minute.” Dorothy watched as Nellie and Tilly padded down the hall. A random “fuck” and then “shit” came out of Nellie’s mouth as they walked away.

  “What a vulgar-mouthed child,” my mother finally said.

  “Come on, Mom,” I said. “I’ll show you my room and stuff.” While we walked through the halls, she was thinking so loudly, I could almost hear her. The click, click, click of her boots echoed through the corridors. The cement walls felt different with Dorothy here in them. Two worlds were colliding, and I was stuck somewhere between them. I was all jumbled up inside. We reached the open door of the lounge. The girls were sitting in their usual spots, most of them smoking. Wren was leaning against the wall. Dorothy recoiled at the sight of her scar, and then Wren almost smiled, which was rare.

  “Mom, this is Wren,” I said. Dorothy looked down at her with a sad smile, lifted her eyebrows, and said, “Helllloooo, Wren.”

  Wren got out a quiet “Hi.”

  Deanna was sitting on the La-Z-Boy in a tube top and sweats, her pregnant belly hanging out. She was holding a Dr Pepper and a cigarette. She didn’t look over. Gina, the new porcelain doll girl, sat on the couch. Amy looked up from the TV. “Hey,” she said.

  “Mom, that’s Amy.”

  “How do you do, Amy,” Dorothy said.

  Deanna glanced over at us with a rancid face. “What the fuck does that mean, ‘how do you do’?” My heart dropped. I wasn’t sure I could handle this.

  Dorothy stayed still for a moment and then unbuttoned a few buttons on her coat and looked straight at Deanna. “That means … nice to meet you.” Dorothy stepped a few feet closer to the La-Z-Boy and pointedly asked Deanna, “And … who are you?”

  Deanna rustled in the chair a bit and answered, “Deanna.”

  With a forced, perfect smile Dorothy said, “How do you do, Deanna.” Jesus Christ—were my mom and Deanna gonna go at it? Dorothy slipped her coat off and placed it over her arm. All eyes were on her. She straightened her shoulders to make herself taller than her five feet and almost two inches.

  Deanna was quiet for once. I quickly veered my mom out of the lounge and into the hall.

  In my room, Dorothy looked around. “Ahhh, well, it’s quite nice really. It’s clean and has some room. Did they supply all that?” She pointed to the burner and food piled on the dresser.

  “No, no, Kate sent that… .” But the second I said it, I regretted it.

  “Your father’s wife sent you that?”

  “Mom, it’s no big deal.”

  “Did you ask her to send it to you?”

  “Well, I asked you to bring me stuff, but you said you weren’t coming to see me. So when I spoke to them, she asked if I needed anything and …”

  “I see.” Dorothy got the look, the pursed-lips-I’m-gonna-fucking-kill-someone, but-I’m-not-going-to-say-anything, I’m-just-going-to-keep-it-all-here-in-my-face look.

  “Why don’t you get your things together,” she said. I took some clothes and shoved them into a tote. Dorothy peeked inside the bathroom. “That’s right, you needed some towels, you said, so did she send those to you as well?” She pointed to the nice plush bath towels. God, why did I mention Kate? I should have just lied. Even in the middle of nowhere Indiana, I was caught between my mom and dad.

  • • • •

  Dorothy’s blue Chevy Malibu was parked in the same spot she’d parked when she first brought me, several weeks ago. I took in the familiar smell of the car. There was a new pile of mess strewn across the dashboard, and I heard a few loud clanks from beneath our seats.

  “I apologize for not coming sooner,” Dorothy said in a soft voice. “I really do … I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Are you hungry?”

&nbs
p; “Yes. I could eat a horse.”

  “Let’s find a restaurant. How about a steak?”

  “Anything would be good. Mom, the food here is uneatable.”

  “You mean inedible.”

  “I mean disgusting, horrible, soooooo gross.”

  We drove out of the parking lot. The car turned right and I rolled down the window. “Liz, it’s freezing, roll it up,” Dorothy said. I leaned my head all the way out into the open air and shouted.

  “No wait.” I took a huge breath. I just wanted to feel it. My mom shielded her hair with her hand while I let the cold wind whip my face. I felt the old me surfacing. I was alive and free. In a couple miles, we turned into the driveway of a small hotel with big flags out front. At the restaurant inside, we were seated at a table by a window. The room was swelteringly warm, with the heat turned up too high. Dorothy took her coat off and hung it over the extra chair. I started to take my coat off too.

  “Lizzie, keep that on, please,” she said.

  “What? Why?”

  She waited a moment, looked around, and then said in a quiet voice, “You need to keep your stomach covered.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said. I was uncomfortably warm in my wool cape coat. We ordered steak, mashed potatoes, and vanilla milkshakes for both of us. Nobody loved vanilla milkshakes more than Dorothy. The waiter brought the shakes over. They had whipped cream on top and came with spoons and striped straws. Dorothy closed her eyes and took a long sip from the straw. In about four seconds she was sure to say something ridiculously melodramatic, and sure enough, she did.

  “Now that is pure unadulterated heaven, is it not?”

  I took a sip and nodded.

  “I mean, criminally divine,” she went on. I kept sipping and smiled. She was wearing the same swirly gold clip-on earrings she always wore. Her hair had been recently done. She always had a beautiful patterned silk scarf somewhere close by; today it was wrapped around her shoulders over her thin black sweater, tied in a loose knot to the side.

  “Mom,” I said. “You know Nellie, the really big girl you met? She’s pregnant with twins. That’s why she’s so big.”

  “I see.”

  “And she also has horrible water-something in her ankles, and she can barely walk sometimes. Did you have that when you were pregnant with the twins? Does that only happen to people who are having twins?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m glad I don’t have it. Oh, and, Mom, I wanted to tell you that the girl with the scar on her face? Wren, guess what? She’s only thirteen years old, almost fourteen but still, she’s the twins’ age, can you believe that?”

  “Tragic.”

  “She told me how she got the scar, she—”

  But then Dorothy put both hands on her head. “Liz, stop!” she said. She covered her face with her hands.

  “What? Mom?”

  “My God, sweetheart, please stop talking about these girls. Honey, I don’t want to know …”

  “Okay, I’m sorry.” She looked at me, and then up at the ceiling, as though she were inviting God into the conversation.

  “This may not have been the right decision to bring you here—to live, day in and day out, with these degenerate unfortunate girls.” I held my breath. Was Dorothy going to say I should come home?

  “I am sorry, Liz, so very sorry. I had no idea it would be like this.” She started to cry. I felt guilty and confused at the same time. Maybe I would get to go home and have snow days and a normal life again. She got up from her seat, came around the table, and sat in the chair next to me. She leaned over to hug me. I hugged her back.

  “This is terrible,” she said, “the whole thing … the girl in the lounge, what a frightening ill-mannered creature. I wanted to slap her right across the face.”

  “Everyone wants to slap her, Mom. But she was raped by her foster dad, that’s how she’s pregnant.” There was a pause. Dorothy let out a quiet shriek and buried her face in her hands again.

  I watched her carefully. I could feel the little beads of sweat falling down my forehead and nose; I was boiling up in my coat.

  “You’re perspiring, honey,” Dorothy said.

  “I’m super hot.”

  “Okay. Take off your coat.”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  “Liz, take it off.”

  “You sure? I’ll put it in my lap so you can’t see my stomach.”

  Tears flooded her eyes. “No, it’s okay, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. Please take it off.” Dorothy helped me with the coat and threw it over the chair. I wiped the sweat off my face with a napkin.

  “You are not like those girls, Liz. They are doomed people, and you are not.”

  Doomed? “Mom, but—”

  “You have a beautiful life ahead of you, and I don’t want this to mar that for you. You must not allow this to change you, to get inside of you. These people are hopeless and ignorant. Their stories are stories you shouldn’t even know.”

  “But I do know them, Mom.”

  “I don’t want you talking to the girls, bonding, sharing about our life and family, do you understand?” I nodded. She braced herself and said, “I wish we had another choice for you, but we just don’t. We are going to have to be very strong and get through this the best we can.”

  “Okay.” So there it was, I wasn’t leaving. I was there for good.

  “It’s not so much longer that you have to be here.”

  “It’s pretty long, Mom.”

  “Not in comparison to the rest of your life. It’s a small bit of time.”

  Then she got the look on her face, the look I’d seen many times before. Her determined look. “You can get through this, Liz. You just have to find it inside yourself.” Dorothy the cheerleader emerged. Her eyes lit up. “You are strong as an ox. You can do this, sweetheart. But you must not forget. You’re here for one reason, to get this child out of you, that’s it. Once it’s over, you must try to forget about these times, move on, and put it behind you.”

  I was crying again. She stroked my hair, and I wondered if she knew what she was saying wasn’t true. Did she actually believe that? I was never ever going to forget this place, these girls, and these stories. I could already feel it changing the person I was, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Maybe my mom would never know the gravity of it, but this was something I was learning for myself—on my own.

  Dorothy took a deep breath, fixed her scarf, and then took her lipstick out of her purse. Without a mirror, she flawlessly outlined her lips, then smudged them together and smiled at me. I tried to smile back.

  “Gather yourself, honey. We’re going to be fine, we have to be. Call upon your courage, Liz, and remember, you’re only given what you can handle.”

  • • • •

  When we left the restaurant, my stomach was so full I could barely move. We decided to walk to the shopping center a few blocks away. The cold breeze felt good. I’d been aching for so long for the familiarity of my mother, for a little bit of home. Yet somehow this didn’t feel as I’d imagined.

  Dorothy was chattering while we walked, filling me in on everyone. My brother had just moved to San Diego, my older sister was now in a sorority, my other sister was thinking of staying and living in the South after college. And here I was: in a small town in Indiana, hiding my pregnant stomach, with Dorothy by my side. We passed a park with a small pond. Kids were ice-skating, and parents were standing on the side watching over them. I thought about our backyard at home and wondered if the pond was frozen over, if the twins were playing broom hockey on it. At the shopping center in town, Dorothy insisted on buying me a warm flannel nightgown like the ones I had at home, but bigger. There was a bookstore next door, and there was music playing behind the counter as we entered.

  “You hear that, honey?” she said.

  “Hear what, Mom?” Dorothy put her foot out a little, lifted her shoulder up, and started singing in her low full voice, “I hope that heeeee turn
s out to beeeeeee …” She turned, pointed to the speaker in the ceiling. “That’s Ella Fitzgerald.” The girl working behind the bookstore counter smiled. Dorothy got a little louder, “Someone to wattccch over meeeeeeeee.”

  “Hey you sound pretty good,” the girl at the counter said.

  Dorothy bowed a little and said out to the air, to no one in particular, “What a love song that is, boy, love is great isn’t it?”

  I meandered over to the paperback section while my mom soft-shoed down a different aisle. I found a used-book shelf, grabbed several books, turned down another aisle, and grabbed some more. We bought the books, pens, and some stationery and then headed back to the hotel. It was my favorite time of day. The sun was setting and everything had that amber tint that makes you feel no matter where you are, life is reasonable, things are going to be okay. And then the dark comes.

  I plopped down hard on the hotel bed. My mom walked over doing a little dance-walk thing, snapping her fingers.

  “What, Mom, what is it?” I said.

  “We’ll order room service and find a good movie, shall we?” Dorothy grabbed the TV guide off the desk. She’d been an avid classic movie fanatic her entire life and had effectively converted all of us at very young ages. We were possibly the only children in the world who willingly watched black-and-white movies. “Oh, gosh, this is an arduous decision we have to make here, Liz. Roman Holiday or Gaslight. Which shall we watch?”

  “Roman Holiday.”

  “You sure? Don’t you love Gaslight?”

  “I do, but I’m feeling Roman Holiday.”

  “You’re absolutely right. One simply can’t go wrong with Audrey Hepburn.” I lay down next to my mom on the plush king-size bed. Dorothy was in her pink silk nightie as she drenched her face in Pond’s cold cream. The smell reminded me of everything safe and easy. Audrey Hepburn, the princess, was standing in her bedroom wearing a nightgown that resembled a wedding dress. Dorothy’s eyes were glued to the television.

  “What an incredible room she has. Isn’t it, sweetheart?” Audrey Hepburn’s bed was the size of Texas, and the windows were floor to ceiling. My mom always talked during the movies. “Holy mackerel, Gregory Peck is handsome. My God.”