Watch How We Walk (19 page)

Something huge and heavy pushes against Emily's chest and she cannot breathe. Her entire body stiffens and her throat feels blocked. Colours smear around her and everything blurs into one seething mass.

— Let us now pray for his repentance and his strength to ward off Satan.

Emily clutches her bag of Trixie Belden books to her chest. She can feel the smug eyes of all the other brothers and sisters fixed on their row. She's hot and the room spins. She lets her hair fall over her face as she instinctively bows her head and closes her eyes. She doesn't hear a word of the prayer.

Emily tries to exhale, and the floor drops away, as though she is falling into a gaping canyon. She grips the armrests on her chair and glances at Lenora. She isn't praying. Her eyes are open and she looks straight ahead. Emily can't tell what she's thinking from the look on her face; it's one she's never seen before. Her jaws seem frozen, her mouth slightly open, and she is leaning forward, as though about to say something. Uncle Tyler is across the aisle from them, his head down, his face and neck blood-red and his eyes closed tightly.

The Hall spins around and around and it won't stop and Emily's mouth is flooded with spit and her stomach clenches like there's a giant fist in it and her mouth opens to let it out and before she can do anything about it, she throws up all over the floor. A yellowish pool seeps into the carpet and some has splashed onto her shoes. Her eyes burn and stream and there is a horrible sour taste in her mouth.

Brother Davies ends his prayer with a sombre “In Jesus' name, Amen,” but Emily has heard none of it. The stench must be everywhere and her face feels hot and blotchy and people have started to twist around and cough and wrinkle their noses and stare at her.

Ahead of them, Sister Bulchinsky cranes around to look at them. She meets Emily's gaze and shakes her head sadly. Emily narrows her eyes, gives her the meanest look she can muster, and without thinking, bares her teeth. Sister Bulchinsky jolts back, covers her mouth, and turns back to face the front.

Emily feels her mom shake beside her. She is afraid to look. She is afraid to stand as the final song is beginning. She avoids the mess in front of her and moves closer to Lenora, who doesn't pull away. Emily doesn't know where to look or what to do and the last thing she wants to do is sing. Everyone else shuffles to their feet and flips open their songbooks.

Emily shakes her head over and over again and digs her fingernails into her palms. She's still falling, and may never stop.

Her mom blows her nose and doesn't stand. Her dad puts his arm around her and she pulls away, then jumps up and runs down the aisle and out of the Kingdom Hall. Emily and Lenora stand rigid and frozen but neither of them sings. Emily stares down at the notes and lines but they twist and writhe like snakes.

27

IT WAS FALL. THE COOL
air was restless, swirling and darting and filling every corner of the city with its deep, mossy scent of decay. I let it flit across the back of my neck and leave a trail of goosebumps and shivers behind.

I was at the gym that had been converted from a warehouse. I opened the main doors and inside, thick, heavy air rushed to greet me. It was dense with sweat and body heat, echoes of coaches' shouts and tumblers' thuds, and clouds of chalk dust that rose like spectres from the hands of acrobats.

Deciding whether or not to come here was agony.
After the initial thrill of finding such a place — of
Circus World
dreams of funambulism — began to wear off, my insecurities rushed in and took over. I paced and debated for days: should I go, should I forget it, should I do it, could I do it, was I stupid, would I fail, was it the right thing to do? Again, I longed for the days when making decisions was simpler, when I was a kid — a precise list of what was allowed and what was forbidden.

Don't be such a chicken.

Would you do it?

If I want something, I do it. I'm not a wimp.

Fine. I'll try it. But don't laugh at me.

So I went. The leaves were falling and I was learning to walk on air. To disappear into memory. Avoid another day of disaster.

That's what I told myself, anyway. What I had actually done, against my better judgement, was sign up for Janice's tightrope walking class.

At my fourth class, I changed out of my black boots and into the soft-soled shoes and took my place by the half-metre practice wire, not nearly as thin as the high and distant real thing. I had yet to progress from there; it was all more difficult than I had expected, and contrary to Janice's optimistic assumptions, I lacked natural balance and grace. After every session, my thighs and calves ached and felt swollen and heavy and didn't cooperate with the most basic of movements. Still, I was addicted to the exotic atmosphere and adrenaline rush of taking one more step on the cord without falling.

As I began my warm-up stretches, bending at the waist over my legs, I realized what I liked most about my tightrope lessons: they kept me from thinking. I focused with a cold intensity on my body — the precise positioning of my feet, toes pointed, and spine straight, eyes looking only straight ahead, one foot in front of the other. No guilt. No memories. No thoughts. Just focus. Nothing else.

— Okay, are you ready for today?

Janice always had a lot of energy and enthusiasm and her blond ponytail always bounced in time to whatever she said.

— Sure.

I turned and put one foot onto the wire.

— Hold on, hold on.

Janice led me back to where I had been standing on the mat.

— We're going to try something else for a while today.

— Okay.

I tried not to let disappointment flood my face. Was I not improving at all? Was I not even good enough to train on the lowest wire?

— Stand straight. And don't move.

I aligned my spine as best I could and stood still. She said nothing, and I was determined not to speak first. Two young girls swung from their knees overhead on the trapeze as other students practised their flips and somersaults and landings. The room hummed with kinetic excitement. I felt conspicuous in my immobility.

— Now close your eyes. Don't open them until I tell you to.

It was harder to keep from thinking when you weren't moving. The sounds of the gymnasium eddied around me and I could no longer tell which direction they came from. It all seemed much louder than usual. Then someone laughed, and though it sounded far away, it was familiar, deep and free but tinged with a hint of malice. I felt like I was falling. My left foot jutted out and my right compensated as my eyes flew open. I looked around, trying to see into every corner of the huge room at once. I touched the bracelet around my left wrist. I didn't see her.

— Again!

I squinted, remembering that I was there with Janice, my instructor.

— What?

— Try to do it again.

She sighed and even her hair seemed to list with disappointment.

— Focus. Work on your balance. The longer you can stand still in one place without swaying or stumbling, the closer you'll be to getting up on the wire.

I looked only at the blue mat, smudged with grey. Pathetic. I couldn't even stand still properly.

— Once you can stay perfectly still for a while, try it on one foot. Do that for the rest of this session, and don't touch the wire.

Janice turned and walked away. I shrugged, shook my limbs out like I had seen others in the gym do, and closed my eyes again.

I felt like I was being punished. Maybe I was.

28

ON THE WAY HOME FROM
the meeting, her father drives too fast and her mom stares out the window with her arms wrapped around herself. Lenora turns the pages of the
Awake!
magazine over and over, while Emily picks at the hangnails on her thumbs until they bleed. Lenora doesn't even bother to swat her hands or tell her stop.

— Slow down, Jim.

Her mom peers out the window and Emily follows her gaze. Dark, skeletal trees shiver against the blue-black sky and the stars hide behind the thick, heavy night-clouds.

Her dad doesn't respond, and doesn't slow down. Bits of the road sparkle in the headlights and Emily tries to think this is beautiful, like a street of tiny diamonds, but she can't. It just looks sharp and cold and mean.

Lenora sighs and shifts in her seat and closes the magazine, then her eyes. Emily wonders if she is going to sleep the rest of the way home. How could she possibly relax and rest and dream after this? Doesn't she care that everything is getting smashed up into little pieces and mixed together and no one will ever be able to figure out how to put it back properly again? Doesn't she care about anything anymore? Emily's mouth and throat are hot and dry and all she can taste is sour and her stomach clenches and unclenches desperately, like a heart, but there is nothing left to throw up.

Then Lenora starts to hum — loudly and off-key — the song they sang in the meeting, the happy one, the only one that isn't boring, still with her eyes scrunched closed; over and over again as loud as she can she hums “Watch How We Walk”
and no one tells her to stop.

At the same time that the car begins to slide, Emily notices that her bloodied thumbs have dripped all over her skirt in red smeary blotches. There is a bend in the road and the car is going faster and faster and not slowing down at all. Her first thought is that her mom is going to be mad she stained her skirt, and her second is that they're about to be in a car accident. Every pore on her skin prickles, even the ones under her cast, and she can suddenly feel each individual hair on her head and they tingle like they're all alive. Lenora has stopped humming and outside it's black and the headlights streak through the night as they flail all over the road, and her dad isn't driving the car properly at all. Her mom yells, “Jim! Jim! Jim! Stop it!” and he twists the steering wheel one way and then the other and still they slide into the other lane. The back end of the car swerves forward and they are going backwards and sideways and Emily can just make out the tree that her side is heading straight for, closer and closer and she's going to be the one smashed against it, and why doesn't her dad make the car go straight? Then they spin in a circle and Emily grabs the door and they slide more slowly now, until they are facing the right way again. A truck comes toward them and passes and doesn't hit them. They are almost stopped at the side of the road, and her dad pulls into someone else's driveway. They all just sit there, breathing and breathing, and not saying anything.

Their dad clutches the steering wheel and lays his head against his arms and prays. Emily leans forward to make out the words and that's when she realizes he's not praying. He's chanting. He's droning the same phrase over and over again:
never again, never again, never again, never again, never again, never again.

Emily's throat squeezes shut and so do her eyes, and though she tries not to, she cries a little. She's pretty sure no one noticed, as all four of them now stare out their respective windows and don't dare look at each other.

After a long while like this, her dad starts the car again and they go home, very slowly, and when they get out of the car, Emily's legs don't work very well; they wobble and shake and she falls into the snow next to the car. Lenora pulls her up but says nothing. There isn't anything to say. Emily stands in the snow, staring into the dark sky, watching for something to appear — a sign, stars, the beginning of Armageddon, anything.

Inside, their mom tells them to brush their teeth and go to bed.

— What? Now?

Lenora stands in the middle of the living room and throws her gloves against the back door.

— So we're just going to pretend that the meeting didn't happen at all? That everything is totally normal? That Dad didn't almost kill us on the way home?

No one responds, and she stomps upstairs and slams the door to her room.

Emily's hands shake and she doesn't know where to go in her own house. After scrubbing and spitting the bile taste from her mouth, she tiptoes back into the living room, picks up a brown velvet-covered pillow from the couch, then puts it back down again. The boots by the back door are jumbled and so she arranges them neatly into two rows of pairs. Her parents are in the kitchen, where her mom slams cupboard doors and bangs her coffee cup hard onto the table. Emily goes upstairs.

The phone rings and rings and no one answers it.

Unchristian conduct. Unnatural acts. Men who lie with men.
If her parents start to talk about the meeting or discuss what happened, she wants to be able to hear them, so she drags her blankets and pillow over to her bedroom door and leaves it partway open. She is silent and unmoving, her cast heavy and hard against her chest. Maybe if she is quiet enough, obedient enough, and prays enough, it will make up for everyone else in her family and things will go back to how they used to be.

Please Jehovah, help us to be strong and not sin anymore. Please help Lenora be good so she doesn't get disfellowshipped too, and make Uncle Tyler be repentant for whatever it was that he did.

Her parents start to shout in the kitchen. Part of her wants to get as far away as possible from them when they fight, part of her wants to hear everything they say, and another part wants to leap in between them and kick and scream until they stop.

— So who was it, then? Who opened their big mouth?

Her father doesn't respond.

— Answer me! Was it you?

— It's not that simple, Viv.

— It's very simple! It's the simplest thing I've ever heard — either you ratted out my brother, or you didn't. Which is it?

Emily's heart contracts. Ratted him out for what? She crawls out from under her covers and down the hall to hear them better, then inches down the stairs, along the side where they creak less. So far no one seems to have heard her, so she shuffles along the carpet toward the kitchen, then peeks around the doorway. Her mother's face is bright red, and her arms are rigid at her sides like baseball bats. Her father's head is in his hands on the kitchen table.

— Don't give me that bull! Don't act all sorry now!

Her mom's voice deepens into a near-whisper that Emily finds far more frightening than a shout.

— You sacrificed my brother to get in good with the Kingdom Hall bigwigs. You told them what they wanted to hear for your own greedy reasons. You'll do anything to become a damn elder — even betray your own family!

He raises his head and finally looks at her. Emily ducks back behind the doorway before they see her. Her father sighs deeply.

— That's not true and you know it. It wasn't me. But people know about him, Viv, and maybe this is the best way to get him to come to his senses.

— Come to his senses?! How? By being abandoned by everyone he knows? Being treated like a leper? By thinking that his own sister is ashamed of him? Or that my sanctimonious husband tattled to the elders?

— He needs to have more faith in God, to not be tempted by this wicked system—

— Oh, that's just great! The same JW clichés he hears every Sunday morning and every Thursday night. Lot of good that's done so far.

— Just calm down! Lower your voice!

— Don't tell me what to do.

— I didn't tell them anything, Viv. Someone must have seen him do something.

— What are you talking about?

The chair scrapes and she hears her mother sit down at the table too. They don't say anything for a while. Her father sighs again.

— Someone must have seen him . . . you know . . . with someone he shouldn't have been seen with.

Emily hears footsteps on the stairs and dashes into the bathroom before Lenora can catch her listening in on their parents.

— Where do you think you're going? It's nearly midnight!

Emily flushes the toilet and comes into the kitchen with everyone else.

Lenora wears black leggings and a big black cardigan with safety pins down the front instead of buttons. Her earrings don't match; one is a big silver lizard, and one is a small black hoop. No one says anything to Emily, who stands in the doorway picking her hangnails raw. Lenora pours herself a glass of orange juice, leans against the counter, and downs it one gulp. She belches loudly and grins.

— Excuse yourself, Lenora.

— Yeah, don't be a pig!

— Keep quiet, Emily.

As usual, Lenora smirks.

— Well, excuse me! Yes, it's very important to maintain appearances around here, isn't it?

Emily sits on the floor in a corner and folds her hands in her lap, as best she can with the heavy cast.

Please Jehovah God, make them stop fighting, and make Lenora be good, so no one else gets in trouble—

— Well, isn't it? I mean, we wouldn't anyone to think we weren't the perfect model JW family, now would we? No, no, couldn't have that. Comb your hair, dress all prim, smile politely, knock on doors, sit still at the meetings, tell the elders what they want to hear — that's what it's all about isn't it?

Their mom gets up and starts to wash the few dirty dishes. The window above the sink steams up and the kitchen smells of fake lemons.

I promise I will not complain about going out in service when it's cold, and I will Witness to kids at school, and always listen at the meetings, just please make my family behave—

Lenora slouches against the cupboards, her elbows resting on the counter, her ankles crossed, the empty glass in her right hand.

Their father hasn't moved from his chair at the table.

— That's enough, Lenora.

She ignores him.

— So what were you guys talking about just now, anyway? How Uncle Tyler's a fag?

Emily's father leaps up from the table, toppling over his chair, at the same time that her mom pulls her wet hands from the suds and pulls back her arm. She smacks Lenora across her face. Lenora stumbles against the refrigerator. The juice glass smashes. She covers her nose with both hands but Emily sees the trickles of blood down her sister's chin. Her father stands in the middle of the kitchen, opening and closing his hands.

Lenora runs from the room and upstairs. Her mother stares at the spot where Lenora, moments before, had stood in defiance.

In Jesus' name, Amen.

Emily doesn't know what to do. She walks to the doorway to follow Lenora, then turns back and paces the kitchen five times. Her parents stand still, as though immobilized. Finally, Emily hauls the broom and dustpan from the closet under the stairs and begins to sweep the broken glass from the floor.

— Thank you, Emily. Her father sighs, as though exhausted.

— Give me that. Her mom snatches the broom from her.

— You're making it worse.

Upstairs, Lenora opens and slams shut drawers in her room. Emily wants to see if she's okay, if her nose has stopped bleeding, but she's scared to do or say the wrong thing. She's scared to move. The three of them stand, rigid and immobile, staring at the floor or the wall, but not at each other.

Lenora's footsteps crash down the stairs and snap them out of their paralysis. Emily backs out of the kitchen and into the living room, where she straightens the cushions on the sofa and then stands in front of the television, unsure if she should turn it on or not. As her parents start to yell again, demanding where Lenora is going, Emily pulls the On knob and cranks the volume on a late-night newscast. People far away sob and wring their hands. A massive earthquake has destroyed a town. A little boy, wearing just a diaper, cries alone on a dirt road, amid smashed houses and crushed cars.

The Last Days.

Lenora stomps to the back door. She pulls on her big black boots and furiously laces them up. She wears a leather jacket Emily has never seen before; it's black and the sleeves are too long, and there's a big red letter A with a circle around it painted on the back. Emily doesn't know where she got it; their parents would never buy that for her.

As she bolts from the house, Lenora grabs one of their father's huge old camping backpacks from a cluttered corner of the back porch. Emily wonders how long she's had it waiting there, and what she packed in it. It doesn't even look half full. Lenora tugs it onto her back and runs down the driveway toward the road. No one tries to stop her. She's a black blur zigzagging across the white snow. Emily is about to close the door behind her and right the boots Lenora has toppled, but she doesn't. Without even thinking, she grabs her coat and boots and follows her.