by Caela Carter
So Linda and Nora are getting four thousand dollars a month to pick up my mother’s nasty little secret. My mother is paying four thousand dollars a month to get rid of me. No wonder I’m so welcome. A list of eight harsh rules costs four thousand a month … that’s like thirty-two thousand dollars! I might as well be in college.
I close the bedroom door behind me and feel the tension snap back into my shoulders and legs.
I drop my towel and slap my palm into my wet abdomen so hard I can see a handprint on it. “Why do you want to be here so badly anyway?”
It’s 10:40 but I’m way too wound up for sleep now, so I flip on my computer to check my e-mail after pulling on my pajamas. I have two.
The first:
Ev—
I know. Todd told me, like, days ago. I told him you’d tell me. I believed you’d tell me. I gave you so many chances. SO many. And you just lied and lied and lied. You’re a fucking terrible best friend.
Good luck in Chicago. Good-bye.
—Lizzie
P.S. You were really going to let me believe Aunt Linda was dying? Screw you.
The second:
E—
I’m sorry I told Lizzie. I didn’t know you weren’t telling her. But don’t worry, if she tells anyone else, I’ll kill her. Good luck in Chicago. Drop me a line and let me know how it’s going, okay? St. Mary’s is going to be weird without you.
Todd
I look at my belly button. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.” I’m still saying it when I fall asleep.
Last Day with the Stiff-Ass
My mother decides to take me shopping.
After puking my brains and the baby’s brains into the toilet in the early morning, I am lying in bed, cursing my baby for the words in Lizzie’s e-mail when I hear Aunt Linda and Nora wake up my cousins in the room next door. I listen to showers running and eggs being cooked and the girls backtalking Nora and climbing all over Aunt Linda like a jungle gym. The garage door opens and two cars slide out. Does Nora want to keep me from ever meeting my cousins while I live in the room next door?
I stare at the bed above me, watching as the characters in my life chase each other through my brain—bean-baby sits there like a flesh-colored blob, Lizzie bursts it out my ear as her screaming face appears then fades back into bean-baby, then Todd picks up bean-baby and throws it like a football until he fades out and Nora appears, just her lipsticked mouth moving as she repeats Rule 8 over and over, then bean-baby sprouts from the paper again, taking center stage, then my parents stand there, neither of them looking at the blob or moving to touch it. Then there it is, all alone again, completely unaware of the hell of a life it’s about to be born into when Lizzie’s e-mail starts running in its eyes and the entire routine starts over again. I can’t do this.
I’m still lying there watching the horror movie playing on my eyelids when there’s a soft tap on the door. I roll onto my side to feign sleeping. She opens the door, and I tell myself that I want to hear her just turn around and leave me alone with the purple unicorns, but I know that I’m really pretending to sleep because I think it might make her come over and say that she’ll miss me or that I can come home if I want to or that Nora and her rules are ridiculous or something, anything real. She sits on the bed and puts her hand in my hair and I feel my breath catch.
“You have two beds in here,” she says. The breath rushes out of me like fire. But I don’t move.
“I thought we’d go shopping today, Evelyn. You’re going to need some winter clothes and some clothes for when you start … getting bigger. This evening you have an appointment with your new doctor. But in the meantime I thought we’d go to Michigan Avenue and shop like we are real Chicagoans. It’ll be fun. Get dressed.”
And she leaves. She said the whole thing like it’s some great mother/daughter/bean-baby adventure but she doesn’t give me a choice.
I want to tell her that at four thousand dollars a pop, Aunt Linda and Nora should be able to pay for my clothes. I want to tell her no way am I going out with her if she’s stiff Lawyer Mom. I want to tell her no. But I’m punishing her by staying silent, so I get dressed and wander downstairs, where she puts a plate of eggs in front of me and disappears to shower. I wonder how long I can go today without saying a word to her.
Turns out I make it all the way until the drive home from the doctor’s office. All day she shoves clothes at me and I try them on and if she likes them she buys them and we end up with shopping bags hanging from every limb but she’s too busy checking sales racks and her BlackBerry to even notice that I don’t say anything. At the appointment, I answer only the doctor’s questions—“When was your last period?” “When did you last have sex?” “Do you know who the father is?” “Do you know his medical history?” And I answer none of hers—“Do you understand what she’s saying, Evelyn?” “How are you going to remember to take your prenatal vitamins, honey?”
On the way home, she’s turning onto Aunt Linda’s street and checking her BlackBerry at the same time like a complete idiot and she doesn’t even see it, a bright red fox chewing on a bird carcass in the middle of the street. Our car advances at 25 mph—it’s twenty feet away, fifteen feet, ten, five. Finally, I shout “Mom, watch out!” But just then the fox sees us and darts into the hedges at the side of the road, and she can say, “I wasn’t going to hit that animal, Evelyn.” So I used my voice for nothing.
We park in the driveway, and since I already broke my silent spell, I turn to her to ask the question that has been bugging me all day. “Do you really think I would be so bad with them that I should be banned from Tammy and Cecelia?”
My mom looks startled. “Oh, sweetie,” she says.
“Because if that’s true”—now that I’ve started I can’t stop the words from coming—“then I’m going to be lousy at … this.”
“Evelyn, I think your cousins are going to be crazy about you. I think Nora is just a bit stiff.” And she takes the key out of my hand and unlocks the door.
That comment is funny for two reasons—the queen of all Sticks-in-Their-Butts has just deemed someone stiff, and she managed to answer me without saying a word about whether I would be a crappy mommy.
We’re only two steps in the kitchen when I feel a startling squeeze on my thigh and look down to see a tiny body on my leg, like a koala bear wrapped around a eucalyptus tree. At first I can only see the braids that pattern the top of her head in all directions, but then she tilts her neck back and fixes her cinnamon face on mine. “I never had a cousin before.”
I look at Nora chopping carrots on the counter and try to tell her with my eyes that her daughter just attacked me. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t break Rule 8.
“Cecelia, step back so Evelyn and Aunt Judy can get in the door.”
Until I hear that—Aunt Judy—I haven’t realized that these are my only cousins too. I’ve never had siblings or cousins or any kid around. Besides the one inside of me.
Cecelia unwraps herself from my leg, and even though I don’t know how to hug, my leg immediately misses her little body, my knee longs for her chubby cheek to be pressed to it again.
“Now,” says Nora, “say hello.”
I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or the four-year-old who is bouncing at my feet, but either way I take that as permission and squat down to take Cecelia by the hand.
“You know, I’ve never had a cousin either,” I say. “I’m very excited to get to know you too.” I feel Nora’s eyes burning a hole in my ear.
“But you’re all big,” says Cecelia.
“You think so?” When she nods, her little braids bouncing off her shoulders, I add, “Just you wait then.” Completely forgetting every tear that’s stung my eyes.
I’m shocked when I hear both Nora and Mom start to laugh.
“Do cousins play Legos?” Cecelia asks.
“I’m sure they do,” I answer.
“Goody!” she squeals and she moves toward my legs as if she’s tr
ying to climb me again. “Then come and play with me and my sister in the family room. We have pink and purple and light-blue Legos. Which is your favorite?”
Her tiny hand pulls at my skinny arm. I look at Mom for guidance—I’m not supposed to be in a room alone with them. Mom looks at Nora. Nora says, “Let Evelyn go upstairs and rest before dinner, Celie. She’ll eat with us when Mommy Linda gets home.”
“But she said cousins play Legos!” Cecelia shouts.
“That’s one for backtalk,” Nora says like a robot. “If you don’t get to three, we can all play Legos for fifteen minutes after dinner.”
Cecelia opens her little mouth and closes it again. Then she looks at me. “I thought you were like Mommy Linda,” she says, and walks out of the room. I don’t know what she means: She thought I was Chinese? She thought I was talkative? She thought I was pretty? She thought I would play Legos? Whatever she thought, I want to be that.
I turn to leave the kitchen and Nora says, “Where are you going, Evelyn?”
“To my room to rest,” I answer. “Like you said.”
Nora nods and I walk through the family room without even greeting Tammy because I’m not allowed to. The worst thing about Rule 8 is that these girls are going to think I don’t even like them.
I drag myself and bean upstairs. I’m too sad to be angry. I’m tired, but even more than that I’m hungry, so I know there is no way I’ll sleep. I open the door to the closet to start to unpack and notice the full-length mirror on the inside. It’s too tempting. I strip to my bra and underwear with my back to the mirror, then turn to analyze where on my body I can see the bean.
My stomach is a little closer to round, a small mound stretching toward the mirror between my hips that you can only see if I’m naked. My feet are bigger, the fat almost pulsating at the sides of them. I have boobs. Little ones, but they actually have mass and I could squeeze them with my hands if they didn’t hurt so damn badly. My butt actually arches away from my lower back. I look good, almost. Better than a sack of bones. It’s temporary, though. I wish Todd could be here right now, just for a second, to cup my ass or kiss my breast when there is actually something there. Except that he’s a total jerk.
“Mommy Linda!” Little girl voices erupt downstairs, and four tiny sneakers pound the kitchen floor as they are no doubt throwing themselves at my aunt the way I used to when she would come home from the library after studying. I would be so glad she was there in time for my bath that I would fling my whole body into her stomach and chest. But standing naked in my room looking for evidence of a baby, I’m not sure anyone will ever be able to hug me like that again. I want to be Cecelia’s size.
When I hear Aunt Linda yell up the stairs, “Where’s my niece? She must be hungry!” I allow my four-year-old smile to dance on my face before pulling my clothes back on and slumping down the stairs.
Aunt Linda brought home tacos; Nora made a salad; my mom pulled together her delicious salad dressing. We sit down and Aunt Linda says, “Now I don’t know who at the table believes what, but I know all of you love me, so for me you’re going to hold hands and at least pretend to join in while we pray.”
Both Nora and my mom roll their eyes. I’m seated between Cecelia—who clutches my hand tight—and my mother—who lets hers hang in mine like a dead fish.
I like Aunt Linda’s prayer, even if I don’t believe in God. And I like that she prays for me. After she shouts amen, Cecelia turns to me and says, “You see? That’s how we knew we had a cousin before we even met you. Because Mommy Linda prays for you every day at dinner. But she didn’t tell God about all that orange hair on your head.”
When everyone laughs I think that this could almost be normal one day.
For a minute, I think that maybe we could just stay here—me and bean. And even my mom. I can see a baby screaming at this table while Cecelia dances around it and tells it how great it is to have another cousin. I can see Mom laughing when the baby makes a sound it shouldn’t or smiling when it sprouts a tooth. For a minute, everything seems like it will be okay again. But those minutes never even last a full sixty seconds.
Nora’s smile straightens back into a line too quickly. “How much were the tacos, Linda?” she asks.
Aunt Linda is leaning over Tammy, wiping salsa off of her chin. “I don’t remember.”
In the corner of my eye, Mom shakes her head over Aunt Linda’s hair. Nora sighs, exasperated, as if my aunt Linda is a little girl.
“Well, where’s the receipt?”
Aunt Linda looks at her. She almost looks scared. “I don’t know, Nora. I was rushing back.”
“Yes, you were very late.”
My eyes bounce between them.
“One of the new teachers had a total mental breakdown in the bathroom, and I was trying to help her get through it. The first day of school is Tuesday, and the teachers are not ready at all.”
“Really, though, the students are your responsibility,” Nora points out.
Aunt Linda shakes her head. “I don’t want to get into it tonight, Nora. I’m sorry I forgot the receipt. I’ll work on it.”
“And call when you’re on your way home so I can have the table set?”
Mom keeps her eyes on her plate, but I can see a smile playing with the ends of her lips. This is almost exactly a conversation Mom and Aunt Linda would have at our house: money, time, responsibilities. Aunt Linda was always messing up in my mom’s eyes.
Suddenly, there’s a memory: Aunt Linda at my house, drying me after my Evie burrito and telling me to make sure that I listen to more than just my mom when I grow up. “Life is more than rules, Evie-Teeny. Life is actually about laughing and loving and dancing your heart out. Don’t let rules steal your joy because you, my precious Evie, you are so full of joy.”
And I was. I remember the screaming way I used to laugh when Aunt Linda threw me over her shoulder or Dad pulled me out of my seat in the middle of dinner for a dance. What had happened to that joy? This baby, that’s what, and the Silent House.
And now I’m mad at Aunt Linda—she lectures me my whole life about Mom and her rules, about looking for a way to have more joy. She says she’s searching for joy when she quits medical school to be a social worker, moves to Chicago, comes out, shocking Mom over and over. Aunt Linda told me that shocking my mother was part of the joy, that she was making Mom better by prying her mind open. The day she moved out—I was almost eight—she told me she was never going to live with someone so rule obsessed again.
What has she done?
She’s married my mom—a blond, lesbian version of my mother. Screw Aunt Linda! If she hadn’t married this stiff shrew I could have moved in with just her, and we’d be popping popcorn and dreaming up names for the baby and talking about what color to paint the nursery. How could she marry my mother? Now I will never be free of the Ice Queen.
After dinner, I am allowed fifteen minutes of supervised Lego time with Cecelia and Tammy before the girls need to be put to bed. I do the dishes and listen to them get baths. When I’m sure they’re getting the burrito treatment, I wrap the dish towel around my middle.
Later, I sit at my computer to deal with the e-mails I’ve been ignoring all day. I hear voices coming through the wall and I’m slammed with another memory. I move the desk chair over and lean against the wall, ear first, listening to Aunt Linda spinning one of her famous bedtime stories. I haven’t heard this one. It must be new. Of course it’s new. There are pigs—three friendly pigs who want to befriend a spider. I love Aunt Linda’s description of the pigs’ pink and plushy house and the spider’s silvery, stringy apartment. I want to crawl in bed with Cecelia and let bean listen. Then I hear Nora say, “It’s past nine, Linda.” It pisses me off, but Aunt Linda just laughs and says, “To be continued, my beautiful girls.” It’s starting to feel like eavesdropping, so I know I should peel my ear away from the wall, but I don’t move. They get good night kisses and warnings when they ask for five more minutes or a glass of water, or
to snuggle.
Finally, their door clicks closed and I face my computer again. I have two new e-mails:
My Pumpkin,
I know you said not to call you that, but that is who you are to me. My Pumpkin. And I miss you. You have been gone only 48 hours and I miss you already. I know, I know. I haven’t talked to you enough over the past few years to claim missing you so quickly now, but it’s the truth. I’ve been missing you for so long, I can barely stand it anymore. I know I messed up and I know I should have talked to you about it, but you froze as a ten-year-old in my mind and I just had no idea what I was doing. I still don’t. I’m hoping that you’ll e-mail or call. I’m hoping to be Daddy again and for you to be Pumpkin again. It’s too much to hope for, but what is a man without his dreams?
I doubt I’ll hear from you soon, but you’ll hear from me tomorrow. And I promise it won’t always be this cheesy.
Dad
The second:
E—
School today sucked. I got caught smoking behind the gym. I’ve never even done that before and I got caught today. Now I’m suspended tomorrow AND grounded forever. Can you believe it? Lizzie and Sean got caught too, but neither of them is grounded.
Todd
Since I’ve been in Chicago, three people have written me e-mails. I write back to the one who doesn’t want to hear from me.
Lizzie—
Okay, I know this is not enough, but I’ll tell you now: I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant and I’m going to have a baby and my parents kicked me out and that’s why I have to move to Chicago for the year and I’m here with Aunt Linda, which would be cool except her crazy wife-lady Nora has all these rules and won’t even let me really talk to my cousins and it’s really just awful and I really miss you. Please don’t stop talking to me just because I’m so bad at it. I know you’re mad, but I need you. I don’t know what I’m going to do once I have this thing and I was going to tell you, I swear, but I just didn’t know how to bring it up and what to say and all that and I could barely even tell anyone. I didn’t even tell my mom—I made the lady at Planned Parenthood tell her.