Just Pretending

by Lisa Bird-Wilson

  After he was finished, Lucy tried to hug him. She thought that Tremaine Sheppard, despite his lumpy nose, wasn’t entirely unattractive. Lucy just wouldn’t have picked him first, is all. Lucy consoled herself about her second-string boyfriend with the fact that he did have a silver front tooth and it made him look tough. She firmly told herself she was pleased that he was going to be her boyfriend now. Tremaine didn’t spend long before he did up his pants and whispered, “I’ll be right back.” He jumped off the fort from the top and she could hear the excited voices of the other boys as Tremaine joined them.

  She waited and imagined that the other boys must think she was daring for what she did with Tremaine. They’d know Tremaine was now her boyfriend.

  She heard him coming back up the hanging bridge and smiled expectantly. Instead of Tremaine, though, it was Gilles, the small French boy, who entered the fort. He came over and sat beside her on the wooden floor of the fort, slinging his arm around her neck. She let him do this, and soon he had his tongue deep in her mouth, his lips pressed so hard on hers that tears sprang to her eyes. This kissing wasn’t nice, she thought to herself. She wondered about Tremaine and then thought that this must be what he wanted her to do. She was determined to think of Tremaine as her boyfriend, and if he had sent Gilles up to the fort to do this, then she would go along with it. Maybe it was a test, she thought. She had heard stories about other girls, popular girls, doing things like this. This might be what it would take to get to be popular, she thought. So she let Gilles grind away on top of her while she daydreamed about how her newly enhanced status at school would feel the next day.

  After Gilles, Lucy waited again for Tremaine. Instead, the black-haired boy came up to the fort. She didn’t want to kiss him, so she asked him his name.

  “Greg,” he said, and she knew he was lying. She didn’t know why, but she knew it was something boys did.

  He tried to kiss her again, and so she said, “Can I try on your glasses?”

  He looked at her strangely, like he didn’t trust her. Lucy didn’t like that look. But then he took off his glasses and put them on her face, jabbing her ears with the arms. She couldn’t see through them and they made her dizzy. She reached up to take them off but he grabbed her hand and held it, took them off her with his other hand.

  “My mom will kill me if they get broke,” he said, and giggled his high-pitched laugh.

  Lucy put her hand on the fly of his jeans, but he didn’t want her to do that either. Instead, he took his own thing out of his pants and then rolled on top of her and jabbed it between her legs. Lucy looked at the sky, clouding over, and waited for him to finish. She quelled a feeling of disappointment by thinking about how she would hug Tremaine when this was over.

  After “Greg,” she waited for Tremaine to come back to the fort. It took a while before she realized that the boys had left the playground. It was getting dark. Lucy left the fort and walked home with the scent of the boys on her fingers and her clothes.

  Seven months later, Lucy arrived at school after the bell but before the teacher. All the kids in the class were in their seats, talking loudly. Randy Rhode, who sat at the back, saw Lucy come in and he said, at full volume, “Look, I think Lucy’s pregnant.” This caused the other kids to laugh because Lucy’s belly was so big she could hardly manoeuvre into her desk anymore – of course she was pregnant. Lucy went to her seat, which was also at the back. “Everyone says it’s your brother did that to you,” Randy said. “Is it true?”

  Lucy turned and looked into Randy’s face for a long time. Finally, he looked away. But Lucy wasn’t trying to shame Randy into looking away. She was trying to imagine what his words meant. Is that what people thought all along? she wondered. Do people really think that? Randy was talking about Billy, her foster parents’ “real” kid. Billy didn’t go to Lucy’s school. He went on the bus to some special school for smart kids. There was a word for those kids, but Lucy could never remember it – she just knew it wasn’t the same word as they used in Lucy’s school – “special ed.” Billy’s word was a better word than that.

  Finally, she crossed her arms and put her head down on her desk and mumbled, “He ain’t my brother,” which was just stupid, she realized too late, because it was like she was saying it was true that Billy got her pregnant. If they didn’t say it before, they said it then, that Lucy was pregnant by her brother. “She lets her brother fuck her.” After that, things only got worse. Eventually, Lucy was expelled for fighting even though it wasn’t on school grounds. Lucy told herself it was okay, she was used to people making excuses to get rid of her, and so, Fuck them, she thought.

  Lucy Wingfeather had her baby. Less than a day old, he lay in his Plexiglas bassinet beside Lucy’s bed in the hospital. A dimpled beige curtain provided the only privacy in the hot room with eight full beds. A woman who wore her paper hat like a disposable lid couldn’t bring the breakfast tray fast enough, as far as Lucy was concerned. Lucy scooped dry corn flakes to her lips at first with the spoon but then with her fingers. She chewed the flakes into clods and swallowed them in chunks. She guzzled the milk from the carton, a sweet white line running to her chin. She tore the two paper sugar packs open and poured them, one at a time, in small white cascades onto her tongue. She looked at the Plexiglas cot and thought, He sleeps a lot.

  That afternoon, a nurse snuck in and caught Lucy lying back on her pillow with her eyes closed. The nurse plucked up Lucy Wingfeather’s baby just like that from his plastic space-alien bed. And Lucy, who wasn’t really asleep anyway, and who had never had anything of her own before in her life, sat up straight away and followed the nurse. “Where are you taking him?” she asked.

  The nurse turned and blinked through thick lenses, unsmiling. “He needs a bath.”

  “Not yet,” Lucy pleaded.

  The nurse blinked again and said, “But you were asleep,” as if this was some kind of logic.

  “No.” Lucy shook her head like a child. Lucy hadn’t been asleep. “Uh-uh.” Lucy stood with her arms out, waiting for her baby to be returned.

  The slight tightening of the nurse’s lips told Lucy the power game was on. The nurse turned and walked away, the baby tucked firmly in the crook of one arm. “This baby needs a bath.”

  Lucy, with leaky breasts and torn perineum, shuffled after the nurse. Lucy watched the nurse clip along the silent corridor, getting farther and farther ahead.

  Finally, Lucy caught up to them in a small room, where she looked on helplessly as the nurse stripped the baby. With a dish of soapy water on hand, the nurse rubbed each fold of his newly hatched skin with a soapy cloth. The creases at the backs of his knees, his underarms, his groin. Nowhere was safe. The nurse worked silently and, it seemed to Lucy, angrily. The baby’s head and fine black hair were sudsed and scrubbed before she held him like a football under one arm and rinsed his head under the tap over a large industrial sink, where the falling water made a hollow metal echo. His face was scarlet from the screaming.

  The nurse squeezed cream on his bum, diapered him, wrapped him like a tight twist of grease bannock and handed over a small alien that smelled like antiseptic and soap.

  Back in her room, wide awake, a knot in her throat, Lucy Wingfeather examined her baby. She sniffed his head, his ears, the folds in his neck. All of it was gone: the smell of her body, the hot, peppery scent of birth, the metallic ping of blood. None of it lingered.

  Finally, she found a small streak of dried blood behind one ear. But it wasn’t enough. She put the baby in his bucket and let him cry.

  Lucy Wingfeather was sent home.

  The social worker, whose name was Joni, had helped her find an apartment. It was one of the few close to the rent allowance rate. She only had to take a bit from her food money to make up the difference. Lucy found little brown bugs in the cupboards. The bugs seemed to like the dry cheese in the noodles and found ways to burrow into the packages. Lucy couldn’t really blame them.

  Joni came to do a home visit and
asked the same question she’d asked before. “Who is the baby’s father?”

  Lucy knew what the social worker wanted. She wanted the welfare to pay less for the baby because Lucy was supposed to file for child support from the father. Lucy did what she normally did with this social worker – she started to cry. It usually worked. The social worker seemed to think that the memory of the baby’s father was so painful that the mere mention of it made her cry.

  “Oh, Lucy,” Joni said and slid over on the couch to put a consoling arm around Lucy’s shoulders. Joni fished a tissue out of her purse and handed it over. “Lucy,” she said in a sympathetic voice, “honey, you’ve got to put your burden down. Aren’t you tired of carrying it all by yourself yet?”

  When it became apparent that Lucy didn’t have an answer about the baby’s father, Joni prepared to leave.

  “You’re leaking,” Joni said. Lucy looked down to see her thin white t-shirt soaked with warm milk. Lucy didn’t like the way the nurse had insisted on binding her chest in the hospital when she chose not to breastfeed, so she’d taken the binding off almost immediately after coming home. As a result, she spent most of the day soaked with her own milk.

  “That’s okay,” Lucy said, “it makes me smell sweet.”

  Joni was gone and the baby was crying again. To Lucy, it seemed a lonely sound in the empty apartment. Lucy turned the volume on the television louder and tried to think what to do. The basement came to mind, but Lucy was in an apartment and there was no basement. Well, there was, she thought, but it had other apartments in it and a laundry room with coin-operated machines that never worked.

  She had learnt a brandy trick from a foster mom who took in all the babies – brandy in the baby’s milk made it sleep. She had no brandy or anything like it – she wasn’t old enough to buy alcohol, even if she had the money. Besides, she was out of baby milk anyway.

  Instead, she left the baby lying on the couch and took his soother to the kitchen where she dipped its wet end into the sugar bag. The white granules coated it like a thin crust of jewels. Returning to the living room, she plopped on the couch beside the baby and put the soother to his lips. Instantly his cries stopped. His eyes went wide and he sucked hungrily at the rubber end. Lucy ran a finger over his head, feeling the dark hair, as soft as fur. He watched her with intensity. Pop. The soother burst from his lips as if he’d purposely pushed it out. They both waited, each scrutinizing the other for a dumb moment, and then the baby twisted up his face and released a loud wail. Lucy went to the kitchen to retrieve the sugar bag, brought it back to the couch. She dipped the wet end in again and watched as the baby greedily took it. Over and over again, Lucy and the baby repeated the ritual until finally his eyes glazed over and he fell asleep.

  Lucy snapped off the TV. In the silence, the image of one rural foster home came to mind – a farm, and the dry, lazy heat she associated with her summer there. Lucy lay down beside her baby and fell asleep. She dreamed of fresh butter, sliding down her throat. She woke to the afternoon sunshine filtering through the thin curtains.

  The baby’s small black-capped head squirmed beside her, but he wasn’t crying. He turned his head and smacked his lips, rooting. His fist found its way to his mouth for a moment before jerking out of reach again. Then Lucy Wingfeather’s baby found Lucy’s breast with his tiny bow mouth and he sucked on the damp fabric of her t-shirt. Lucy lifted her shirt and the baby latched on. Both their eyes widened with surprise. Lucy felt the baby’s sharp tug on her breast. He stared into her eyes like a hypnotist, refusing to release her. She watched him, eyes dark and serious as he rhythmically suckled, taking what he needed. Gradually, he dared to close his eyes. She longed to tell someone, but there was no one to tell.

  Afterward, Lucy held the baby to her face, where she inhaled the scent of her own milky whisper on his breath.

  fine stuff

  “That’s a beauty of a tent you got there. Looks like it’s brand new. Need any help?” The father of the red-haired kids from the next site was hunched down at Bob’s side, admiring the tent and smiling good-naturedly. Looking at the man, Bob could see where the children had gotten their doughy looks. Bob told himself this soft look likely belied the fact that the man was as strong as an ox. At least, thought Bob, he was the size of one.

  Before Bob could answer, the neighbour had picked up one of the poles and started inserting it into the tent.

  “Um, I’m not really sure that goes…” Bob trailed off as the pole slid perfectly into place and the neighbour picked up the next one.

  “Oh yeah, this is a real beauty. Here, hold this,” he said, handing Bob the end of an inserted pole and moving around the tent with the last one. “Me and my wife camped for the last fifteen years with the same tent. That’s ours over there,” he said, pointing with his chin. “We got a new one for the kids but it’s nothing special. Maybe it’s time to get something good. I wouldn’t mind one of these babies.” With this, the neighbour gave a little grunt and the pole Bob was holding snapped out of his hand and into its proper position on the ground. “There,” the neighbour said, slapping his hands together, removing imaginary dust. “Now you just have to stake it.”

  Bob’s blank stare prompted the neighbour to pick up the bag of stakes and the shiny new hatchet and begin hammering.

  “I have a mallet for that,” Bob protested weakly, seeing that the neighbour was nearly finished already.

  “Oh, I’ll bet you do. You’ve got some real fine stuff here. All new. Let me guess, first time camping?” The man straightened up and looked at Bob inquisitively.

  Indeed, Bob thought wryly, his mind wandering to his job, where, thankfully, he didn’t need to know anything about camping gear. The near-empty campsite looked bleakly back at him.

  “You got me,” Bob said to the man, smiling. He stopped himself from adding, I’m here to relax. Doctor’s orders. Instead he said, “My wife’s joining me tomorrow.” Roxanne. This had been all her idea. She would deny it, but he understood it was her attempt to bring him out of the funk he’d been in since his heart attack three months ago. Before he left, she’d forced him to surrender his Blackberry, iPad and laptop. He’d had some fleeting thoughts of being able to tap into an unsecured wireless network at the town-site, but Roxanne would hear none of it.

  “Hey, thanks a lot for your help,” Bob said, extending his hand. “I’m Bob, by the way.”

  “Laverne,” the neighbour said, offering a chunky, freckled hand. “Good to meet you.”

  A gust of wind blew through the coin-like leaves of the tall, slender birch trees that surrounded the campsite. Bob looked up to see the thin trees swaying, their leaves flipping in the wind.

  Laverne followed Bob’s cue.

  “I think we’re in for some rain pretty quick here,” he said. “I was going to get some wood under a tarp. C’mon, I’ll show you where the woodpile is.”

  They had just gotten their wood under the tarps when Bob was motivated by a rare spontaneity. He pulled a beer from his cooler without thinking and offered it to Laverne. “Join me?” he asked.

  He was surprised how easy it was to sit in the dull light of the campsite in his new folding chair with this virtual stranger, and how much he enjoyed the cold beers and small talk. Completely out of his element, Bob felt decidedly relaxed already. As the empties piled beside their chairs, Bob and Laverne talked about cars, soccer, football and music. Mostly music.

  “I don’t care what you say, Dylan was a great influence,” Laverne insisted. “Just look at Neil Young,” he exclaimed, as if this solidified his argument.

  “Man, what about the English bands like the Clash and the Sex Pistols?” countered Bob.

  “Don’t you dare start talking to me about Duran Duran or I’ll lose all respect for you,” Laverne warned.

  “I’m talking about punk. It had its moments. It defined things. Not that I ever went in for that stuff. I’m just against thinking it’s all about the Americans.” He paused. “I’m afraid of Amer
icans!” he sang loudly. “Bowie. Now there’s an influence.”

  “Fucking rights,” Laverne agreed, leaning back in his folding chair.

  They enjoyed a moment of contemplative silence before Bob said, “Okay, best concert, what’s yours?”

  “Live?” asked Laverne.

  “What other kind of concert have you gone to? Dead?” Bob teased.

  “The Guess Who. Toronto. When I was seventeen. We drove down from the Peg. There were so many of us in one car the girls had to sit on our laps.” Laverne laughed. “That music’s classic.”

  “Mine’s Bowie,” offered Bob. “Played in Winnipeg in about ‘83. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Was that when he was dressing like a chick and stuff?” asked Laverne.

  “The androgynous phase,” said Bob. “No, he was long past that.”

  “I don’t know what you call it, but it was weird,” said Laverne. “But that would have been a great concert.”

  They sat nodding their heads and drinking their beers, each lost in his thoughts. Every so often, one of Laverne’s kids came running down the gravel road and into Bob’s campsite to tell on a brother or ask for money to go to the store. Laverne’s pat answer was “Go see your mother,” and the kids would run off again. Laverne showed no signs of leaving and Bob had no desire to get rid of him. Bob had a nice buzz going from the beer and was enjoying his freedom. The threat of rain had passed and every now and then a sunny patch would open up in the sky and warmth would land on his back like a gift.