As She Grows Page 4

  “I want to leave home,” I blurt out. “On my own. Get an apartment.”

  Hensley has sat on his glasses and has a thick piece of tape on the corner of the right lens. This makes them slightly crooked and makes him look even more confused than he already is.

  “I don’t understand,” Hensley says, leaning over a desk too small for his body, his hands clasped as if in prayer. I figured if God was alive today, he’d be like Hensley: a slightly dishevelled, brilliant genius who occasionally forgets to wear socks in the winter because his mind is preoccupied with something slightly more significant. Somebody you’d trust the fate of the world to, but you’re not so sure you’d let him drive your car.

  “My grandmother is making me crazy.”

  He closes the binder in front of him.“How’s that?” he says, one brow skeptically raised, as if he were calling my bluff.

  I pause a moment. He wants evidence. What do I say? Everything? Or just what’s gone on in the past few weeks? Do I tell him that Elsie poured Windex in my cereal instead of milk, or that she was so drunk she left the oven mitt on the burner last week? Do I tell him that if it weren’t for my skull holding my mind together, my thoughts would just disperse like water without the glass? I assumed Mr. Hensley would be different, I thought he’d be on my side, but now I’m not so sure. Now I’m beginning to think that Mr. Hensley has no clue about anything, and that he sees me as just a kid with an attitude. I begin to think that Elsie’s games worked on him. He’s met her, several times.

  Elsie would take a shift off work and come in. I used to think she did it to punish me, but really she did it to look like a good mother. She’d buy a new scarf or slacks, something she said was classy and teacher-like. Still, she’d always get wrecked the night before, even though she promised she wouldn’t. And then, in the morning, she’d have her friend Barb come over and curl her hair.

  At the meeting, she’d laugh with Mr. Hensley, dangle her shoe from her toes, tilt her head flirtatiously. She would tell him how difficult I am but how she was going to keep trying. She’d tell him that she knows she has some personal problems, but she’s doing the best she can, considering the circumstances, and she couldn’t bear giving me up to the Children’s Aid Society, because I deserve a real home. I don’t know what else to do with her, she’d say, sighing deeply. And then both their accusing adult eyes would stare at me and words like accountability and responsibility and lazy would squeeze through their thin, tight lips. And I’d end up sitting there, glaring at Elsie, fixating all my hate onto a single flittering nose hair or a cigarette burn on her sleeve or yellow armpit stains.

  Mr. Hensley must think I didn’t hear him because he rephrases his question. “How’s she making you crazy?”

  “She just is,” I say cautiously.

  “I see,” he says, with a disappointed look on his face. He thinks I’m doing this for attention. He thinks I’m making a rash adolescent decision. “It’s hard getting along with parents at this age.” He stands up, runs his finger along the spines of the binders on his shelf, and then pulls out a blue binder labelled “Life Skills.”“That’s why communication is really important,” he continues while thumbing through the binder. “When you’re older, you’ll get along better with your grandmother.” He passes me some sheets with titles like “Personal Budgeting” and “Rental Agreements.” He says he’ll work with me on these activities if I’m really serious about it. “Living on your own is a tough reality, but take a look at these sheets.” Then he tells me about group homes and social agencies and gives me a list of emergency numbers and shelters, in case I need it.

  I take his useless papers and get up to leave.

  “You’re not in danger, are you?” he asks just before I reach the door, as if this has just occurred to him.

  I consider what he means by this. Am I in danger for my life? Am I starving? Is my grandmother threatening to kill me? Does a slow death by insanity count? I know the deal, they’ll only respond if you’ve got skin hanging off your wrist or if you’ve got a bloody nose from your father’s fist. I know there’s no place for my story. There is no place for a story without extremes. “No,” I say.

  “I didn’t think so,” he smiles. “You seem like you can handle things.” Then he winks at me. “See what you can do with those sheets.”

  I smile. “Thanks,” I say, and shove the papers in the bottom of my knapsack.

  “Don’t fuckin’ help or nothing,” Elsie mutters when she gets home from work. Her body is wedged in the doorway, Dominion bags dangling from her hands. I’m too exhausted to get up from the couch to do anything about it, and by the time I pull my hands back to push myself up, she’s already through the door. She bangs cans and cupboard doors and jars around in the kitchen, ensuring that I know she’s spending her good money on feeding me. As if she wants a reward for it. As if it isn’t me who usually has to fill the empty cupboards, even though she works in a goddamn grocery store. As if it isn’t me who cleans the house every week, without her ever once saying thank you.

  “Jesus Christ, Snow! This chicken’s rotten!” she yells. I lean forward to look into the kitchen and see her head stuffed inside the fridge and the rest of her body bulging out. I think of the tempting view Gretel must have seen, that irresistible opportunity to just push and close the door.

  “You’re the one who put it in there,” I say. “I don’t even eat chicken anymore, remember?” I start picking at a blister on my foot with a safety pin. I don’t have the energy to argue with her. I don’t have any energy at all lately. I know she’s waiting for me to say something, give her a reason to split open that “customer’s always right” sweet smile she’s had to paste on all day. Instead, I get up and drag myself into my room, close my door, lie down on my bed, and think of water and my mother.

  The smell of onions from the kitchen makes my stomach turn. Just the thought of food lately makes me sick. Elsie is making hamburgers, which means Mitch is coming over for dinner, which means I’ll leave for my swimming lesson early to avoid him. Mitch is Elsie’s creepy boyfriend who has been around forever. Since Jed, and maybe even before. Almost everything about him disgusts me. The way he horks in the shower, the way he always rests his hand down the front of his jeans when he watches hockey. Elsie says she thinks he’s sexy. She says he reminds her of a small Michael Bolton, with his shapely mullet and his broad jawline. But I just can’t get over those baggy tank tops he wears, with gaping holes down to his elbows as if the world wants to see his stinky armpits and his hairy nipples. And then there’s the slimy tattoo on his forearm of an arched-back woman with perky tits. The kind of silhouette pictures you see on the mud flaps of trucks. Still, he cleans up after himself and he leaves the toilet lid down and he makes a point of telling Elsie when I’ve vacuumed, so he’s somewhat tolerable, if I keep my distance.

  At six o’clock, I go to the washroom to get my swimsuit, hanging on the back of the door, but it’s not there. I check the laundry bag and my schoolbag and under my bed.

  “Where’s my swimsuit?” I yell from my bedroom doorway.

  “How should I know?” Elsie yells back.

  “I left it on the back of the bathroom door.” I wait for an answer. There is banging and clattering, so much commotion for bloody hamburgers.

  I walk to the kitchen and plant my arm firmly on the door frame. “Where the hell is it?” I ask accusingly, “Where’d you put it?”

  Elsie throws her fist down into the huge slab of ground beef. “I didn’t put it nowhere.” She glares at me. “Why would I touch your gaad-damn swimsuit?”

  “Because you don’t want me to swim!” I snap.

  She squishes her face up, her mouth hanging open, as if my words are the most unbelievable thing she’s ever heard. “Don’t be an idiot,” she says, shaking her head and returning to her meat pounding.

  I storm back to my room, determined to go to my swim lesson even if it means going naked. I ransack my drawers and find my old swimsuit.

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nbsp; “You’ll miss dinner,” Elsie says as I stomp past her to leave. As if I’m supposed to stick around the one time she’s cooked something, like I haven’t been feeding myself for years. As if I don’t realize she’s cooking for Mitch, not me.

  “Good,” I reply and slam the door as hard as I can. I know the bitch took my swimsuit. I’d bet my life on it.

  I sit on the edge of the big pool, extend my legs so that my feet are barely skimming the water. Behind me the Dolphin toddler class shrieks as the instructor pretends his elbow is a shark fin and chases their bubble-floating bodies.

  Water has skin. A strong layer caused by surface tension. It explains how bugs skitter across water as if walking on stone. The women in our family have thick skin, Elsie’s voice resonates in my head, as if we had these heroic pioneer ancestors who chopped firewood for their freezing children. And I remember thinking, What family? What women? I dip my big toe slightly into the water, watching it pierce the surface. That’s the strange thing about skin. This thin layer can be stretched forever, holding all of you together, but it can be broken by just the smallest pinprick.

  Greg leads me back toward the kiddy pool and I scan the deck to see if anyone is looking. I jokingly suggest the bigger pool. “We’ll get there,” he says, winking at me, “but you’ll have to settle for being a big fish in a small pond first.” His arms go above his head and he slips off his T-shirt. I stare at his chest and lose myself in the waves of his stomach.

  I am officially the only person in the class now. He says that his supervisor wanted to cancel my spot because they are losing money, but Greg told him it wouldn’t be fair to me. “It’s not good business,” he says. I should feel guilty, but I don’t, because it’s better this way.

  First we spend time dunking down in the water. “Get a feel for the water. Feel it on your skin. Just let your arms float,” Greg says. I squat waist-high in water, limbs angular and stiff, and feel the cold bite the back of my neck. After a while, Greg tells me to put my chin down and practice blowing bubbles, like we tried during our first lesson. He demonstrates, putting his face in the water and making a blubbering sound, the kind kids make in the bathtub. It amazes me how good-looking he is, even with fluttering lips.

  “Can I face the other way?” I ask, embarrassed of my flapping mouth. He gestures that it’s all right, and I turn, immerse my lips, and try to flubber without making noise. After that, we sit on the edge of the pool, and as he shows me the rotation of arms for the front crawl, I stare at the drops of water on his chest. I imagine this must be what he looks like when he steps out of the shower.

  We get back in the water so Greg can show me the final step. “You need to know how to breathe properly, because when the lungs are full of air, it gives the body buoyancy. You’ll need to learn how to take a deep breath. Now, it’s not a fast deep breath, it’s a slow, drawn-in breath through your mouth. I usually tell the kiddies it’s like slowly breathing in the smell of freshly baked cookies, but you ever smoke weed?” I nod my head smiling. “It’s like that, nice and slow. When you’re blowing out, think of candles on a birthday cake.”

  I start laughing because I can’t believe he’s talking about weed like it’s normal. And it shocks me because it’s the first time an adult has ever talked to me like this.

  “So breathe in weed, blow out candles?” I ask, just making sure I really did hear him right.

  “Awesome. Perfect. Wonderful,” he says, and I beam like a five-year-old.

  I practice breathing deeply in, then out, in, then out, until I feel dizzy. Greg tells me to try it underwater, to hold my breath and count to five before blowing out. He tells me to put my whole face in, ears submerged. When he gestures to begin, I breathe deeply and seal my lips, feel my face break through the water’s skin. I submerge into the peaceful quiet, thoughts of Elsie disappear as I press my face to my mother’s liquid soul. Then, without warning, I am invaded. Water swallows my face, penetrating ears and nostrils and tiny pores. Thoughts of my mother’s water-filled body flood through me. I hear her desperate fingers above me, scratching the thin, clear layer. A layer she couldn’t break. And I suddenly realize the dual purpose of skin.

  “You didn’t exhale,” Greg says, when I can breathe once more, after the coughing and gagging.

  I wipe the chlorine tears from my eyes. “It didn’t seem right,” I answer. He gives me a few minutes to relax on the side of the pool before I submerge my face once more.

  I go to Mark’s house after swimming class. My hair is still wet, leaving a big round mark on his pillow. He licks my stomach and says I taste like chlorine. Then he tickles his tongue down my thigh till I can’t take it any longer and I clamp my knees together to trap his head and stop him.

  It is strange the places on a body that summon you. Mark has six scars: two on his hands, one on his forearm, one on his leg, one on his face, and the one we don’t talk about, on his left wrist. I am drawn to these silent marks, rough edges of once-perforated skin, indications that there is a way inside. Evidence that there is something beneath Mark’s surface.

  I reach down, his head still at my knees, and brush the scar streaked across his cheek like a generous paint stroke. “Tell me about this one again,” I say.

  “You’re crazy,” he whispers, smiling.

  “I like to hear it,” I whine, until he brings his head up to my bare chest and tells me how he got into a fight when he caught some skinheads trying to beat up his little brother in a park. How after he pulled the pimply faced guy off his bloodied brother, a bunch of fourteen-year-old kids jumped Mark. How one smashed a beer bottle on the sidewalk and then sliced Mark’s face. I think of new questions to ask each time he tells me: Was it a cloudy day? What did you eat before that? Were you wearing running shoes?

  He laughs at my strange questions, but I persist. Then I listen to his answers, envious of the privileged facts. I need to know this, this detail; I need to know what it takes to break skin.

  Mark holds up my hand above us and plays with my fingers. “So small,” he says, “like a chicken bone. I could just snap it.” Then he softly kisses the tip of each finger and I am suddenly compelled to mean more.

  “Did you talk to your father?” I ask, knowing he was supposed to receive the collect phone call from jail today. He’s in for assault with a weapon, for beating some guy up at a bar who took his beer.

  “Yep,” he says, holding my hand up to his, comparing size.

  “And?”

  “Was nothing.” He puts down my hand and reaches over to the night table, grabs a spliff, and lights it. “Wants me to get some papers or something for him.” He takes a deep drag and then extends it out for me.

  “Will you?”

  “Are you fuckin’ kidding?” And that’s the end of the conversation. Mark hates his father. Not the way I hate Elsie, but a complete flat-out hate that offers no tiny folds of forgiveness. He lays his head against my chest and I play with his hair, imagine I am touching moths’ wings, hoping some of him will flake off and I’ll ground him.

  4

  I’m in a kitchen, though it’s not really a kitchen, it’s more like all rooms in one. There’s a bed in the corner and a couch by the fridge. Mustard wallpaper lines the walls and in the centre of the room is a fake-wood table with chrome legs. It stinks like the public washrooms in parks or hockey arenas. There’s a dark-green shag carpet, and if you look close enough, you can see things like cigarette butts and pieces of food like chunks of dandruff in thick hair. I cling to Elsie’s arm, my back pressed against her leg, averting my eyes from the woman in front of me who Elsie says is her sister.

  “Come sit over here.” The woman pushes out the chair beside her so hard it topples over and almost hits my leg. She scares me with her scratchy voice and her yellowed fingers. I freeze and look to Elsie’s unresponsive face for permission. But then the woman starts to laugh like it’s all so funny. “What’d you do to her? She’s scared as a mouse!” She then turns to me.“That’s all right, ju
st a chair, won’t bite you.” In the absence of Elsie’s objection, I move closer to the chair.

  “Caw, caw!!” The woman sticks out her fingers like claws and startles me backward. She is laughing hysterically, her wide teeth like rotting corn.

  “You’re scaring her!”

  “Oh, don’t be an idiot,” the woman spits at Elsie. “I’m fuckin’ family.” She holds a cigarette in her mouth and motions to the chair again. I cautiously walk toward her as she speaks through me to Elsie. “She’s got my eyes,” she says, her hot breath on me. Just as I’m about to sit, she starts to cough and splutter.

  “You stink,” I say, surprising myself, “like garbage.”

  And the woman stares at me, mouth opened wide, with no air coming out until I think she’s dying, but then I realize she’s actually laughing. “She’s just like her mother,” she finally breathes out and laughs hysterically.

  “That’s enough. I don’t know what I was thinking. We’re going.” Elsie pulls my hand so hard I start to cry.

  “What’s wrong with that woman?” I asked in a dark and smelly hallway.

  “She’s dying.” Then Elsie bends down to me and firmly presses her hands on my cheeks. She squeezes so tight my teeth hurt. “Don’t worry—to us, she’s already dead.”

  I wake in Mark’s room with a pain in my gut. I have to pee. When I climb back into bed, I’m careful not to disturb Mark’s sleeping body. He groans and rolls over, wraps his arm around me. I lie there, wide awake, staring at his arm draped over me like a limp fish. I want to turn and press my body into his, but I don’t. Instead, I just lie there cursing myself for not being able to just do the things I feel. A restless sleep is a restless mind, Elsie used to taunt, often finding me reading in my bed at four a.m. And I’d glance back at her drowsy form standing in the doorway, her paleblue cotton nightie clinging to her large, tired breasts, never bothering to ask her in return why she was awake.