As She Grows Page 3

  “Hey,” Mark says as I squeeze in between him and his rottweiler, Spliff. They both growl a little, reposition, and then Mark’s hand returns to Spliff’s neck. I stare at his fingers, slipped under the studded collar, stroking Spliff’s shiny black fur. Jealous of a stupid dog.

  “Hi,” I say, and suddenly wish I’d never come. I suppose I had imagined it differently. I had pictured Mark noticing my puffy eyes and asking what’s wrong. And then me crying and holding him until he told me things would be okay. But I can’t bring myself to be that way so I just sit there, sighing and shifting my weight, hoping that he’ll notice and ask what’s wrong. But he doesn’t ask. He never asks.

  Finally, he puts his hand around my neck. “Let’s go to my room,” he says. We rise, Mark’s inseparable black shadow trotting and snorting down the hall behind us.

  Mark’s room consists of a bedside milk crate and a mattress on the floor with no sheets. The walls are entirely covered with his ten-year collection of Sunshine Girls, arranged according to blondes, brunettes, redheads, and “favourites.” Taped up around his bed are pictures from Penthouse magazine of women with their legs spread wide and nipples like pencil erasers. I think the photos are disgusting and I tell Mark every time I walk in the room. Usually he just laughs at me, but then one time he got all serious, saying I’m prettier than all of them, paid for me to get my belly button pierced, and then put three photos of me in my tube top and jean shorts above his bed.

  Mark closes the blinds and we lie in bed in our underwear, listening to music. He shows me his latest pencil drawing that he did at work at the factory today, on his lunch hour. I tell him it’s amazing. He’s the most talented artist I know. One day, he says, he’ll study art in college and maybe do graphic design. This sketch is different than his usual pencil drawings of serpent monsters and video-game girls with tiny waists and enormous round breasts. I hold the sketch up closer to my face. It’s of a girl’s face, but not mine.

  He says it’s the face he sees in his dreams. “Like an angel,” he says.

  I look closer. “It doesn’t have any wings.”

  “Nah,” Mark says, taking back the drawing. “Not all angels fly.”

  “I wanna leave Elsie’s,” I blurt out, just like that. I immediately wish I could stuff the words back in. Mark will think I’m an idiot, because we weren’t even talking about that.

  “Hmm,” he mumbles, leaning out over the bed and dropping his drawing to the floor.

  “I know I can’t stay here,” I say, pausing a moment, hoping he’ll correct me. But I know his deal. He’s been straight up from the beginning and that’s what I like about him. No games. He told me when I first met him that he didn’t want any more relationships. He said he couldn’t deal with any more clingy, psycho girls. He said he wanted things to be simple. “I’ll probably go to my aunt’s, I don’t know,” I continue. “Can I just crash here tonight?” I stretch out my arms and yawn, pretending it’s not a big deal. Pretending I’m just too lazy to get up out of bed and walk home.

  “Just tonight,” he says, leaning over and opening the bedside table drawer to light a roach. “ I’m going to Montreal tomorrow.”

  “Montreal? Why?”

  “Got shit to do,” he says, which is always all he says and I don’t bother asking more, because I know it will just piss him off. I turn over on my side and face the wall, because I feel my chin trembling, getting tight, and I don’t want him seeing me cry. He rolls over and I hear the rustling of his weed bag. Then I hear the phhhht of matches, smell sweet smoke, and focus on Mark’s sucking inhales. “I’ll be back in a couple days,” he adds softly, and starts tickling my back. I squeeze my eyelids real tight, to stop any tears from spilling out.

  He runs a finger up around the edge of my bra as if he were a kid fingering a cookie plate. My body rises to him like a cat’s responsive back, pushing into him. For the next hour, his hands are like water, patiently rubbing me smooth. He says things like your skin’s so soft and how does this feel? He insists on facing me after we have sex, pulls me tight to him, leaving our limbs to intertwine behind each other’s bodies like insignificant afterthoughts. Our sweaty stomachs stick together and make sucking noises when we temporarily pull apart, to release cramped legs. He holds me tighter than I do him, and in a strange way I know the reason he can let himself go like this is because he is already detached, in some eternal free-fall state, firm ground long forgotten. He pulls my face into his chest, squeezes me firmly, my mouth pressed into his ribs. I feel suffocated in his skin. I take short, shallow breaths and count the minutes till I can turn to face the wall, protected by the jagged bones of my spine. I am terrified that Mark’s depth will swallow me, like a child who drowns in a puddle.

  The water in the kiddy pool is warm. I feel as if I’m in a bath. Greg, my gorgeous twenty-six-year-old instructor with muscular shoulders and washboard stomach, says the heater will be fixed on Friday. No rush, I think, and press my back against the side, fingers behind my neck grasping the edge of the pool. Two little girls in water wings doggy-paddle past me, their mothers’ safe hands trailing them, ready to keep them afloat. The ladies glance suspiciously at me, like I’m some pervert hanging out in the kiddy pool. They steer their splashing children away to the deep end and keep them there, stretching their arms out to their sides to act as impassable barriers. I suppose it’s instinctive, this need to protect. But I feel like telling them I’m not the one they should worry about. It’s the water their daughters are floating in that will hurt them, not me.

  “I’m taking swimming lessons,” I said to Elsie, after she picked up her keys from the counter and placed her hand on the door. It was a Wednesday night, three weeks ago, and she was late for bingo.

  “Oh,” she said, cold and aloof. “Good,” and then she paused, like she didn’t know if she should continue, but couldn’t stop herself, “Why?”

  “I thought I should learn, you know? It’s dumb to have been avoiding it, really. I mean, if anything, I should learn. Right?” I could barely contain the smile, feel the edges of my mouth curve upward. Elsie doesn’t want me to learn to swim. I know this, and it feels so good to hurt her. She has always liked this convenient expanse of water, this moat, keeping me from my mother. Elsie is afraid that I will cross and leave her stranded on the other side.

  “Right,” she said vacantly, and turned to leave.

  I allow my legs to levitate up in front of me, float away and find their own position. My bum sinks slightly and I feel the safety of the tile bottom beneath me. Gripping the edge, I surface on my back and stare at the ceiling. My breathing surrounds me, then fingertips leave tile and I am released. We were all delivered from water.

  This is how I see her. My mother’s body, floating face down, her long hair and dress billowing out around her. White sandals gently strapped to manicured toes. Perhaps a necklace hanging down like a shiny lure. Cocktail party chatter and loud music from inside a suburban house vibrates the wineglasses on the aluminum poolside table. She had taken a stroll outside, maybe tipsy from too much champagne or maybe she needed a break from the excessive questions of her recent labour.

  I have constructed scenes of how it happened. In my mind I have a list of could haves, and, like selecting music, play them according to my mood. She could have just been walking along the edge of the pool, an overconfident foot slipping out from under her. She could have reached out a little too far to save a flittering bee or a stray cocktail napkin. She could have been with someone, a secret lover say, who pushed her ever so slightly after she spoke of leaving him. These are the scenes I create, but I never see her face in any of these narratives. They are like scripts, unassigned actions open for faceless actors. I do not own any of them.

  When I do see her face, it’s when she is floating dead in the water, calm and defeated, almost even smiling. In my mind she is beautiful and silent. Her skin is pale and smooth. I search the scene for me, wonder where my new pink body is. In a crib dreaming of my own nost
algic buoyancy? Or perhaps safely strapped into a car seat just a few yards away, breathless and terrified, sensing my second severing of bloodline.

  I feel my body become heavy, as if it were filling up with water, as if my mind has returned with its rational weight. I begin to consider the depth of water, the sting of chlorine in my eyes, the foggy fluorescent lights above my head. My body starts to sink in the middle, like a folding chair, bending straight and slow. Then I feel Greg’s hand support the small of my back, and his face appears above me, brown curls dangling down into his green eyes.

  “You all right?” I hear his words in the muffled distance. “See if you can raise your hands above your head,” he shouts and my arms go up like a snow angel. “Looks good!” He makes a thumbsup motion, removes his hand, and leaves my vision, my body folding once more, as if he had pulled a cord and collapsed me.

  At the end of the half-hour we stand, thigh-high in water, as Greg explains the physics of buoyancy and basic water safety. I’m embarrassed of my ratty swimsuit. I cross my arms, self-conscious of my pointy nipples and my snotty nose.

  “So that’s it. You did great. Once we master the floating, then we’ll go on to some basic strokes.” He pats me on the shoulder. “How did you feel?”

  “Heavy,” I say.

  3

  Jed, Elsie, and I are standing at the edge of a field, our toes over the steep bank of a river. I am wearing my favourite blue Adidas running shoes with three white stripes. The sun is warm and the country air is light and sweet in my nose. Above our heads, hanging off the tree branch extended over the water from the opposite side, is a frayed rope that Elsie says used to hang all the way down to the water. Elsie holds her hand out, sways it back and forth, and explains how my mother would swing like a monkey all afternoon when she was my age. And how Aunt Sharon would push her, but never went on the swing herself, because she was too scared.

  Jed takes the lid off the margarine tub and throws his arm out, releasing the ashes into the slight breeze and down into the water. Little drops lightly blow back on my skin, like weightless snowflakes. I close my eyes, push my face out into the dust, and imagine tiny kisses. “Jesus Christ, Jed!” Elsie yells and my eyes bolt open. “It’s all over my jacket.” And I look up to her large hands, frantically brushing her sleeves. “Jesus mother fuckin’ Christ,” she yells hysterically, and Jed moves in to help but his hands get tangled up in her jacket that’s now dangling halfway off her arms. And she tells him he’s a useless son of a bitch, and as they wrestle about, my eyes return to the water, watching the dust get carried away down the river. And it makes me happy to know that my mother’s floating forever along like that, but then my eye catches a grey line forming around the side of a half-submerged branch. I toss a rock to sink it and miss. I toss another and the branch disappears into darkness, releasing my mother once more.

  “What are you doing?” Elsie’s eyes are red and glaring at me. She looks disgusted. “It’s not a game,” she says, turning away. “See, she shouldn’t have come. She doesn’t understand.”

  Jed takes my hand and leads me back toward the car, pulling me away from Elsie. His hand is rough and firm, yanking me along. He looks forward while I look behind, to see Elsie on her knees beside the river. At first I think she’s fallen, but then I see she’s staying that way and she’s rocking back and forth and she’s crying and all of a sudden I’m uncomfortable, as if I’ve just seen her naked. When Jed asks me what’s wrong, sensing my break in stride, I tell him nothing.

  The glowing red numbers on my alarm clock are so bright the whole room has a devilish tint of red: 3:07 a.m. I listen to the screeching of the kitchen fan and try to lull my mind to sleep. It’s surprising how calming the scrape of metal against metal can be. I try to forget the dream that just woke me up. A recurring dream is a message unheard, I think to myself, but try to stop myself from considering its significance. Surrendering to the impossibility of sleep, I take some blankets and grab the pillow and head to the washroom. The room is cold, but the night-light casts an orange warmth over silver and white. I throw the pillow on the floor beside the bathtub, lie down on the blankets, and listen to the tinkling of the broken toilet. It’s an unlikely lullaby, but one that has soothed me to sleep after bad dreams since I was young. I finally close my eyes, roll onto my side, feel hipbone trying to force its way into the stone mattress.

  I knew Carla wouldn’t understand but I needed to tell someone. I write her a note in math class. I write about my swimming lesson and floating and about how each time I submerge my mother surrounds me. When we meet in the washroom at 9:50, I give it to her to read in the stall because I’m too embarrassed for her to read it in front of me.

  “Isn’t that a little weird?” she asks, emerging from the stall.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, feeling my face go red.

  “Well, you know,” she says, and makes a series of facial gestures as if I were supposed to know what she meant. I remain purposefully confused. She takes a deep breath, “Well, it’s just that you don’t ever want to talk about your birth mom or anything, and now you’re talking about feeling her death in the water, and I don’t know. Isn’t that kind of, I don’t know, morbid?”

  “No,” I say defensively, unable to follow up with anything else. My face gets hotter and I look toward the exit.

  “I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “I’m an idiot. I don’t know what I’m saying. I obviously don’t know what it’s like.” Then she gives me a playful push on the shoulder. And I smile weakly in response.

  The idea of my mother has always been foreign to Carla. She cannot understand why I don’t search for her past, grill Elsie, inspect hospital records, or call distant relatives. She doesn’t get that people don’t sit around like on “90210” repeats and get all the answers. Conflict to Carla is something pointy, something you need to file down or extract, but to me it’s more like a dull, accustomed lump just under the skin.

  “Aren’t you ever curious?” Carla asks.

  “I used to be. Not so much anymore.”

  “But don’t you want to know more?” she persists.

  “No. What’s there to know?” I ask. “She feels real to me. You know, in here,” I say, pointing to my temple. “You’ll probably feel that way when your mom is dead.”

  Carla just stares blankly at me, unconvinced. “As far as I’m concerned, the sooner she keels over, the better,” she says, though I know she doesn’t mean it, really. And I know it’s useless trying to explain it to her. If I had more energy, I would ask her if she believes in God, or hate or love, and all those other unseeable things. And when she said yes, I would ask her how she can have such faith in that which she sees, when that which she doesn’t see guides her the most.

  “Besides, there’s always Elsie,” I said instead, like an afterthought, giving her something real that she could understand.

  When you live with a crazy person, you almost become crazy yourself. It’s as if that line of normalcy becomes blurred and you’re no longer sure which side you’re on. Each time I come home it is a surprise. I’m unsure if I’ll be greeted by a sober-faced woman watching “Biography” or someone who stinks of shit and who will ground me for talking on the phone for too long. Tonight I open the kitchen door only to find Elsie on the other side of it, dizzied static hair and housecoat hanging off her shoulder. Her hands are clutching weapons, a spatula and a rolled newspaper. Her knees are bent, body ready to defend. She extends a protective arm, holding me back.

  “Do you see them? Do you see them?” she says intensely, pushing me toward the living room. I stare out into the stillness, the quiet flickering shadows of blue TV light on the walls. “Do you see them?” she repeats, trancelike. Her eyes are glassy and vacant. I stare hard around the room, then stop my eyes from blinking and bulge them wide until I think I see a shadow grinning, or hear a couch spring screaming.

  “Yes, Grandma, there’s one there,” I whisper, pointing to the cobwebbed corner of the room, an
d she hoists a glass from the coffee table and hurls it at the taunting demon.

  “Good girl,” she says and pulls me closer into her chest. I know these moments are crazy, that her hallucinogenic dramas should scare me, and they did at first, but once I knew what to do, I liked them. It’s just her and me against these horrid little demons and I kind of feel like part of a team.

  She hands me a spray bottle that smells faintly of bleach and guides me around the room with the hollow strategic voice of a soldier, instructing what wall, piece of furniture, or floor area to spray. “Atta girl, they won’t like that,” she says, sighing deeply, and then, finally, lying down on the couch. Her eyes slowly close, and I drape the knit blanket over her body and sit on the La-Z-Boy watching her.

  I used to defend my grandmother to the bone. In grade six, I punched out little kids in the playground for calling Elsie a nutter, then I’d go home and write crazy bitch all over the mirror, using her good, red lipstick. But now I just ignore the comments people say because I realize I like Elsie best like this. Curled up on the chair like a little child, vulnerable and needing me.

  At school, I book an appointment with Mr. Hensley, the wildhaired guidance teacher who knows all students by name. We all go to him with our problems. We know he’s all right because he plays a guitar at student assemblies and he talks about the collective consciousness and Pink Floyd, and the only people who like to talk about those things are people who do drugs. When you ask him if he smokes weed, he gets all funny, like he wants to tell the truth, but can’t. So he gives this unconvincing “no” that leaves you disappointed because for once, just once, you’d like to meet a teacher who can come clean and be human. The real reason, though, I like him is because he is the first adult who actually treats me with any respect.