As She Grows (20 page)

“He’s my swimming instructor,” I say, snatching the phone message out of her hand.

Greg is wondering if I’d like to meet. On Saturday. At the pool. One o’clock.

I call him back, Miranda is within earshot. “Ya, okay. One o’clock is good,” I say. It feels strange to talk to him on the phone. I think how backwards that is. That I’m most comfortable seeing him wet and with his shirt off. “I’ll see you there.” Our conversation is short, much to Miranda’s disappointment.

“Is he cute?” she asks me after I hang up the phone.

“You’re gay,” I say.

“I know, but is he cute?”

I can’t stop the smile from spreading.

Miranda laughs, whipping a scrunched paper napkin at my head. I like this about Miranda. She’s gay, but in a good way. She’s not like the rest of Staff, who are convinced we’re all closet lesbians anguished by our repressed sexuality. Sometimes I think the house is an underground recruitment centre for dykes. Miranda doesn’t force us to sit through endless workshops on homophobia and she doesn’t make every little thing in her life relate to being a lesbian. She lives with her partner, she doesn’t wear a bra, and that’s about as gay as she is.

Miranda is so determined that I go to my swim lesson she personally drops me off at the pool on Saturday. In the change room, screaming little girls in pink bikinis run barefoot up and down the aisles. Their tired mothers reach out to grab their squirming bodies, gripping them between their knees while they pull hair into high ponytails. I change slowly in the corner, covering my body with a towel. I feel sick to my stomach. I am dreading a pool
full of splashes and waves. Dreading Greg’s suspicious stare as his eyes trace the curve of my stomach. Dreading more questions about my cuts or my mother’s death. Greg will expect things of me. He will make it his goal to see me swim. And I will disappoint him. I know this.

I convince myself I’m not feeling well. That I may throw up in the water, which isn’t hygienic for little kids. And if I were responsible, really responsible, I’d put my clothes on and just walk out the door.

The thought of you doesn’t make me feel sick anymore. Sometimes, the thought of you even makes me smile. You are not like other babies, the ones I can smell, the ones on the bus who screech in my ears. In my mind you are motionless, like a doll, permanently poised in an open-mouthed, drooling smile. Eyes wide, glassy, and blue, mechanically closing when I lay you down. I sing sweet lullabies to you, songs I imagined my mother singing to me, at night, alone and afraid of the dark.

The words that come out of my mouth will be good-mother words. I will understand you. I will tell you to go ahead and cry if it’s over nothing because you don’t have to be a big girl until you are one. And I won’t throw the mashed potatoes against the wall if you don’t like them. And I won’t make you kneel on a cheese grater if you wet your bed, and I’ll agree that maybe it
is
the end of the world if you don’t find your purple crayon, because who’s to say it’s not?

It’s the crazy bird at the library window that makes me snap out of my trance. I don’t remember how long ago my eyes first lifted from the page of the math textbook in front of me. I can only guess it’s been a while, because my neck hurts, cramped from looking up to the glass a few feet above my head. The little brown bird is fluttering up against the window, all panicked. It keeps flying into it and then rebounding, then flying into it again, wings frantic. And it’s the strangest thing, because if it doesn’t stop, I think it will kill itself. At first, I figure it must be sick, having some kind of trauma, like epilepsy, though I’m not sure a bird can have that. But then I recognize the anger, the focus, and I realize it’s attacking its own reflection in the glass.

The window is too high for me to reach. I consider throwing a book up, so it can see that it’s a window, that the reflection is not another bird. But then it gives one huge fluttering attack that lasts a good thirty seconds before it drops out of sight altogether. I jump up on my chair, on my tippytoes, but can’t see where it’s gone. Then I run outside, leaving all my things behind, even my jacket. Outside the building, I follow the window ledges until I see a brown lump in the grass.

I approach it cautiously. The little sparrow lies stunned on its back, its feet clenched in the air, eyes open, grey belly pounding. I gently scoop my hand under its back, making sure not to kink its neck. I plunk down onto the grass, watch the little thing cupped in my hand, its eyes all glossy, its chest heaving. And I’m staring there thinking how amazing this is, this little bird, its dirty feathers and tiny round head. That I’m actually holding flight in my hand.

Its breathing slowly becomes calmer and its black eyes peer around a little more. I think about how the boys in my building
used to clip dead birds’ feet and chase me with them, or how they’d blow up pigeons’ heads using baking soda in bread. And I start wondering what I should do, if I should take it home or leave it. And if I do take it home, I start to worry about what I would feed it and what if its wing is broken?

As I’m thinking all this, its foot flinches and its body twitches and I extend my arm far out away from me. I close my eyes and push my face into my shoulder, not wanting to see squirming death in my hand. And I think,
Please, just die now, please
. Then all of a sudden, the sparrow jolts up, startled, and dizzily flies up to the branch of a tree. I stand there for the longest time, staring up at it, happy for it to be okay, but also disappointed I can’t take it home.

I look at my watch. It’s after six. I quickly head to the library door, but it’s locked. I can see the librarian lady at the counter, her head down, glasses halfway down her nose. I rattle the door and knock.

“Hello! Hello!”

The lady lifts a stern bony finger and then points to the closed sign, then she holds up her wrist and points to her watch. It’s only ten minutes after closing. I rattle the door. “Ya, I know!” I yell into the glass. “I need my stuff! I left my stuff!” And I gesture to my back to indicate a missing knapsack. She pretends she doesn’t see me, purposely keeps her head down, her lips squeezed tight and wrinkly like a cat’s bum. I pull at the door and knock even louder, anger rising in me. “I need my stuff, you fuckin’ bitch! Fuck!” I punch the wood with my fist and she turns her back, completely ignoring my existence. As if it would be the end of the world for her to open the door. “You fucking ignorant bitch!” I yell, kicking harder and harder, my eyes fixated on the back of her head. When she starts to walk away, I just lose it. Thinking about my bag. And
my math test tomorrow. And about people who can’t bend a rule for just a second. I kick the glass window beside the door and sharp triangles of shattered glass scatter. I surprise myself, I didn’t think it would break so easily. I pull my foot back out of a hole at the centre of the windowpane, cracks spreading like a spider’s web. I look up and see the lady’s head peeking horrified around the corner and then I see her rush to the counter and pick up the phone. I turn and run, through parks and railroad tracks, thinking every siren I hear is for me.

When I get to the group home I stand out back a minute to catch my breath, then I walk in, calm, like nothing happened. I grab an apple, say hi to Miranda, and go up to my room. It’s only about an hour before the doorbell rings and I hear the static radio downstairs.

“Snow!” Pat yells. “Come down here, please!”

I slowly descend the stairs and turn the corner to the living room. The two cops look huge, feet firmly planted on the ground, their hats tucked under their arms.

“Hello, Snow,” one of them says, firm but polite, a tone I know I’m given only because Staff is here. If I was on my own, it would be an entirely different story. “I’m Sergeant Blaine. I think we’ve found your schoolbag,” he says, motioning to my backpack on the chair.

I look to Miranda who is standing with her arms crossed. Her cheeks are red and she’s tapping her foot. “She wouldn’t let me get my bag,” I explain desperately, more to her than to the cops. “It would’ve taken a second to open the door.”

The cop interrupts my plea. “You caused some serious damage to the library. The librarian was quite shaken.”

“She wouldn’t give me my stuff!” I blurt out.

“So you broke a window? That seems a little rash. Couldn’t you knock?”

“I did,” I say. “I did, but she ignored me.”

The other cop pipes in and right away I can tell he’s an asshole. “Why did you leave it in there?’

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you leave your stuff and go outside? What were you doing out there?”

“Nothing,” I answer, folding my arms in front of me. There was no way I’d tell them about the bird. No way I’d let them ruin that.

“Sure you weren’t outside smoking a joint? We found some butts by the entrance.”

“No!” I say, even though I don’t have to deny it, because there’s no way they could have proven it, even if it was true.

“Why did you go out?”

“To have a cigarette,” I say.

“You sure there wasn’t anything else in that cigarette?”

Jasmyn comes in the door and stops dead in her tracks when she sees the cops and Staff and me in the living room. Miranda waves her along but Jasmyn ignores her.

I turn to the cop to answer his question. “I was just fuckin’ studying and took a break. Jesus Christ, is studying against the law?” I say, feeling less outnumbered now.

“You watch your language, young lady. And studying isn’t against the law, but vandalism is.” He turns his head to Jasmyn who is standing in the hallway. “Hello, Jasmyn,” he says. I’m surprised he knows her by name.

“What’s going on?” she asks, one arm up on the door frame.

“This doesn’t concern you.” Pat moves over to her and leads her up the stairs.

The cops tell me that they won’t be taking me in, but that they’ll be releasing me to the custody of the group home. The big cop passes me a yellow paper.

“It’s a notice to appear for a trial date.”

I’m in disbelief. “She wouldn’t give me my bag,” I say, unable to comprehend how I’m the one who’s so wrong here. “Don’t you have something better to do?” I ask. “Like arrest a murderer or drug dealer or something?” Despite my comments, they are nice to me once they realize I’m not going to freak out on them or anything. They tell me that the lady wants them to follow through, but really, because my history indicates no priors, it’ll just mean a few hours in court in about a year from now.

“To be quite truthful,” the bigger guy says, “I wish more young people we picked up were studying at libraries.”

By the next morning the whole house knows what happened. They all laugh and clap their hands when I walk into the kitchen. Jasmyn high-fives me and immediately starts telling the others about finding me in the living room with the two cops. They want to hear everything, about the librarian and the window. We have this whole discussion and it’s as if I’ve passed a major test with them. It’s as if this thin yellow court order in my back pocket is the secret pass to absolute acceptance.

Mark knows about the baby, knows I didn’t have an abortion. He hasn’t said anything, but my tits are huge, and even though I try to suck it in, my belly keeps getting in the way. We stopped having sex days ago and he won’t even kiss me. He snaps at me over little things like spilling Coke on his already disgusting couch or for roughly pushing Spliff off the couch. He tells me I’m getting fat, and that I have dark roots and my fingernails are chipped. When I’m at his place, girls call all the time and he’ll talk to them, all flirty and sweet, right in front of me. And even though I leave him five messages a night, he only calls me back once in a while. But still, it seems like the more annoyed he is with me, the more I need him to love me.

Jasmyn tells me I’m being desperate and that I shouldn’t hang off him so much, but I don’t care. I can’t help it. It’s like I’m stabbing a knife deeper and deeper into me each time I try, and though it hurts, I keep doing it. I hang out in places where Mark will be. I wait down the road from his building, watching for him
to come home and then knock on his door, saying I left my school binder by mistake at his place. Or I’ll walk ten times around his block, until I’m bound to run into one of his friends who’ll tell me where he is. I find ways to throw him into my conversations with Jasmyn, just for the pure pleasure of possessing his name in my mouth. My mind becomes consumed with him and I can think of nothing else. Not even the baby.