My Beating Teenage Heart (6 page)

I mean, they’re my parents. Of course I want to remember.
My parents
. I can’t believe I ever forgot them. The second their faces materialize in my brain they set like cement and make my soul sing. They were so young when they met, practically as young as I am now. They shared a first-year philosophy class at the University of Toronto, Cynthia and Curtis, sitting next to each other in the fifth row of a lecture hall, both of them not fans of the professor or the subject. My dad was a babe back then, which is one of those things you never truly want to realize about your father because that’s gross. Gross but obvious, like the way you can’t miss that it’s pouring rain if you happen to be standing around outside without an umbrella. My mom was pretty too, but in an understated way, an amused intelligence in her face that has always made people wonder what she was thinking. She’s paler and smaller than me—her ancestry half Chinese and half Scottish. Her keen eyes crinkled as she and my father quietly but mercilessly mocked their philosophy professor under their breath all semester, bonding over the act of eviscerating him.

As I’m remembering that, another memory swims up to meet it, an old white man with piercing green eyes locking a grin on me and saying his head was hurting with trying to figure out where I was from. I don’t think he meant it in an unkind way but now that I remember the question I think it’s one I heard a lot when I was a kid. People think they can ask you questions they wouldn’t ask an older person, as long as they’re smiling.

I don’t know if I answered him but the short answer is Ontario, Canada, which is the same place we were when he asked me. And the answer he wanted to hear is really the answer to an entirely different question, which is that my mother is from Canada too and her father was born in Jamaica to Chinese Jamaican parents, and her mother emigrated from Scotland. I see my grandparents’ faces in my mind, my memories doubling and quadrupling. My grandmother on my dad’s side is African American from Chicago, where she was both a teacher and an amateur singer. She moved to Ontario when she married my French Canadian grandfather, and when anyone meets my grandmother one of the very first things they usually find out about her is that she’s quite possibly the world’s biggest Tina Turner fan, which is apparently the reason that even when I have amnesia I can still remember the Queen of Rock and Roll and the song “River Deep, Mountain High.”

I sing the song in my head a little and I can hear the way my grandmother sings it, almost as good as Tina herself. I love that I can remember that. Bit by bit I’m reclaiming my identity.

Sgn=ouldnI see the three of us—my grandmother, me and my big sister Celeste—shimmying and singing along to Tina in my grandmother’s kitchen as cinnamon rolls baked in the oven. A big sister too, yes. One who was long and lean like my father. The prettier, smarter one who always knew the right way to speak and do things, even when we were both small.

My voice would pierce the air in uncontrolled bursts, my elbows and feet accidentally knocking delicate treasures off shelves. Fragile birthday gifts would be broken in no time, clothes torn and holes appearing in almost-new shoes. Even my printing was messy and flopped way over to the left side like it’d been subjected to a strong wind. And, ohhh, at night I would lie in bed with the gigantic teddy bear my dad had won at a company raffle, telling Winston (because that’s what the tag attached to the back of one of his paws said his name was) about my day and then lending him my voice so Winston could reply.

Countless nights we’d stay up late talking to each other, and the following day I’d act like a brat from exhaustion, even clumsier and louder than usual, until my parents threatened that Winston would have to sleep in another room if I wouldn’t go to sleep. Of course I didn’t listen. And then I was distraught when my father came in to take the bear away from me, and I cried so long and hard that my mother had to bring him back.

This was such a long, long time ago, yet the images and feelings are as crystal clear in my head as if they had just happened, the sympathy in Mom’s eyes as she handed Winston back to me and stroked my hair. “You save the talking to him for morning, okay, love?” she said.

Love
. Like her own mother would say.

And my sister … before my life collapsed into this surreal dream-world existence I think I used to be a bit jealous of her, but when I remember Celeste now all I feel is grateful for having an older sister—an older sister and a twelve-year-old brother named Garrett, both of them smarter and quieter than I was. I bubble with happiness as I picture the two of them. Garrett as a baby laughing gleefully as he squirts my diaper-changing father in the cheek. Celeste, years ago, reading me an adventure book about an underground city, sounding, to my young ears, almost as grown-up as my mother although she only has three years on me.

My brain swirls with memories, the sights and sounds catapulting me back to the very beginning. I’d be dizzy if I was conscious. Dizzy and overjoyed at the same time.

So what if this
is
a hallucination? I get to watch my parents fall in love. I see them in philosophy class and want to laugh at how immature they seem. Not like people who are anyone’s parents. Solely themselves, Curtis and Cynthia.

Though they clearly have a lot of fun talking to each other, their in-class chats don’t develop beyond casual friendship. That doesn’t surprise me because now I remember how their version of the story goes, and it doesn’t really get started until years later, at a city hospital. St. Mike’s in Toronto, Curtis visiting my grandmother after her hysterectomy and Cynthia visiting a friend who had just given birth to her first child.

Toronto is full of hospitals—what are the odds my parents would visit the exact same on Sexahile on the exact same day at the exact same time? And even so, with a huge, majorly busy hospital, the likelihood that you’d run into someone must be slim. But there they were in the St. Mike’s gift shop, Curtis in a light leather coat and dress pants that look like they were tailored to fit him and Cynthia in a turtleneck and shapely brown boots. They spotted each other while each of them was examining the bright assortment of floral arrangements in the gift shop flower cooler, and my father did a miniature double take. My mom grinned widely, recognizing him right away too, and exclaimed, “Hey—it’s been a long time!”

“It can’t have been that long,” Curtis said. “You haven’t changed at all.”

They stood by the flowers talking for so long that it was obvious they should go for coffee and catch up, which they promptly did, my father extracting my mother’s number so that they could meet up again soon.

“But not at the hospital,” my mom warned. “Hospitals are bad luck.”

“I think this hospital brought me good luck today,” my dad told her, an earnest smile lighting up his face. “But I’ll meet you anywhere you want to go.” Kind of a cheesy line but I guess Curtis’s babe status glossed over the cheese because they met for coffee twice within the next ten days. On the third date they graduated to dinner and my dad drove over to the apartment my mom was sharing with her sister to pick her up.

This is the part my parents never owned up to—how my mom asked my aunt Sandra to leave them alone so that when my father showed up it was just the two of them. On their first real date that wasn’t just coffee Cynthia invited Curtis in and they started locking lips and mauling each other right on my mom’s cream-colored couch. I don’t know exactly how far things went because that’s the point at which I decide to stop watching and close the door on them, so to speak, but my best guess would be that Curtis and Cynthia didn’t get around to heading out for dinner that night.

There are certain things about your parents you should just never, ever see—even in dreams or hallucinations. And it’s just as well that I’ve stopped there because Breckon Cody has gotten out of bed and, like he promised his mother, is reheating himself something to eat. I check the kitchen clock and notice that it’s nineteen minutes to three and no one else seems to be around. His parents must still be out at lunch, and it looks like Lily went to the health-food store and wherever else on her own.

Breckon’s food, which I think is some kind of linguini, spins in the microwave as he leans against the kitchen counter, waiting. He’s put on jeans and a wool sweater, and seeing him up walking around and back in day wear gives me the impression that he’s feeling a little better. The more I remember about myself and the more I learn about Breckon the weirder I feel about observing him, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s what I’m supposed to be doing.

The microwave dings and Breckon takes his pasta out, sets it on the counter and stares at it. He hasn’t eaten a thing all day and maybe he won’t go through with it now either but he really should. Even if he doesn’t feel like it, he really should eat something. I can Shin9;t go x2019;t help saying it in my head, kind of like when you shout advice at a movie character, although you know they can’t hear you.

Go on
, I urge silently.
Just a little. It looks good
.

Breckon retrieves a fork from the cutlery drawer and lowers it reluctantly into his noodles. He doesn’t bother pulling up a chair; he just leans against the counter and chews mechanically.
Good boy
, I tell him. He manages to finish off about half of the linguini that way, eating joylessly, but at least he’s eating.

Then he stops. Drops the container and fork abruptly on the counter and stalks over to the sink with the same look that filled his eyes when he rushed up to the shower yesterday morning. I brace myself for his tears, not sure where to point my gaze.

“Okay,” he says aloud. It’s the tone of a person trying to convince himself of something and I watch as he switches the tap on, guides it over to hot and then hotter. Steam begins to rise from the water as it cascades from the tap. Breckon peers at it, transfixed. I still don’t understand where this is going but I’ve decided I don’t like it.

Without an awareness of my body, dread doesn’t feel the way it should. I miss the beat of my heart. It should be racing—galloping—instead I only feel the weight of fears lying heavy on my soul. It’s not just Breckon I’m afraid for, it’s me. There are reasons for my prebirth memories that I’m not ready to face, the very same reasons that Breckon Cody’s life is being revealed to me in such elaborate, painful detail.

My fifteen-year-old brain didn’t invent him for its own amusement. What’s happening in front of my eyes is much bigger than that.

He’s nothing but a dream creation
, I insist, battling back against the terrifying revelation rocketing up inside me.
Just a puzzle to solve. Busy work to keep my mind well-oiled
.

You know that’s not true
, the more knowing side of myself proclaims.
You understand what’s going on here, Ashlyn. No one remembers moments from before her birth, not unless …

And when Breckon pushes his left hand under the scalding-hot water and marshals his willpower to keep it there, I howl like the moment I was born.

six
                            breckon

Instinct kicks in.
I should be able to take the pain—worse things happen to people every day—but I can’t. I stumble back, losing my footing as my vision starts to close in on me. Then Moose sprints into the room, barking like a maniac. He runs in panicked figure eights as I fall smack down onto the kitchen floor.

“Shut up!” I shout from the tile. “Shut the hell up!”

&gn="justify">Moose whimpers, the speed of his figure eights unchanged. My left hand hurts so much that my lungs have forgotten how to suck in oxygen. I fight for air, my head propped against the washing machine and my left ankle shaking like an epileptic’s.

Moose barrels out of the kitchen, his high-pitched barking making my heart beat even faster. “Moose!” I roar after him. What the fuck does he think he’s doing anyway? And when has rushing around in the shape of a figure eight ever helped anyone?

The pain crowds out everything else. I can hardly think. I breathe in and out but the air doesn’t feel like it’s catching in my lungs.

The second Moose is sure there’s no one to alert he scrambles back into the kitchen with me, panting hard. A steam cloud’s wafting up from the sink where the hot water’s still flowing and I force myself onto my feet and whack the tap with my right hand, shutting it off.

I flop to the floor again, my head slipping back to its previous position against the washing machine.

“Sit,”
I command before Moose can start his barking routine again. If I have to watch him careen around in figure eights again I’ll end up banging my head against the goddamn tiles.

Moose does what I say, but not in the way I want. He drops down so that his left side snuggles against my thigh. “I’m okay,” I tell him. “Relax.” As long as he stays quiet, I don’t mind him next to me. I’m in too much pain to care.

My ankle’s stopped quaking but my left hand feels like it’s being eaten away by battery acid. I train my eyes on the furious red skin, and seeing the evidence makes it hurt worse. I’ve never done anything like this before; never even thought about it. I can’t believe I really did it.

The physical pain’s so intense that it’s taken me over. I’m 17 percent Breckon and 83 percent burnt skin. It’s a relief, ten times better than just being me. As much as my hand hurts, part of me wishes it would never stop. It blocks out almost everything else, or at least shoves it to the back of my mind.

God, it burns. I pinch the fingers of my right hand around my trembling left forearm to hold it still. Running my hand under cold water might help but I don’t. I decide to let it sear for as long as I can handle. Moose keeps me company. I’ve thought it a hundred times before but here it is again—if Moose was in the house last Friday night to howl up a storm when it happened, Skylar might be alive now.

I sit there on the floor with the dog, just feeling myself breathe and burn, for what must be something like ten minutes before I think I hear a car pull into the drive. The noise plugs me back into reality and gets me standing. My mom keeps a bottle of Advil on the shelf over the fridge. I reach for it, pour two capsules onto the counter and then toss them into my mouth, chasing them down with a swig of fruit juice from the fridge.