As She Grows (4 page)

Still, I miss him. I miss a father who’ll yell at me when I come home late, dressed like a slut, because he remembers what boys my age are like. I miss a father who takes the newspaper into the washroom on Sunday mornings and who makes scrambled eggs for dinner. I miss a father who’ll be embarrassed to buy me maxi-pads and who’ll give me a firm line when I am found dangling from a loose, wobbly one.

The door to Mark’s apartment is wide open, as if someone had just walked in and didn’t think to close it behind him, just like that, forgetting to close a door. I find Mark and four other guys lying on old tweed couches and sprawled out on the ground, listening to Wu-Tang and watching a Britney Spears special on mute. The ratty brown curtains are drawn and it might as well be midnight instead of five in the afternoon.

Mark and I have been together for four months now, though we’ve known each other for over a year. He’s older, eighteen, and so much more mature than the other boys I’ve been with. He’s got his shit together: an apartment, a job, and a cool stereo. And he’s the first guy I’ve met who thinks about more than just sex.

“We make love,” I tell Carla, who keels over and fakes vomiting noises. But I just smile back, because I’d have laughed too, if I didn’t know what a real relationship was like.

As I step over plates of dried ketchup, some familiar faces nod coolly at me or mumble a lazy
what’s up?
The stink of weed in Mark’s apartment is strong enough to give me a buzz. Mark’s only
official roommate is Josh, but his
boys,
as Mark calls them, are always crashing there. Mark’s boys are always nice to me. They have names like Crakhed, Smokey, Killah, and Ash. They call me “Wifey” and tell me I’m not like the other girls. And I wonder to myself,
What other girls?
but I don’t ask because we haven’t been going out long enough. Mark’s boys think I’m like their collective little sister, lending me money and telling me that if anyone gives me trouble, I should come to them.

“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 nostalgic buoyancy? Or perhaps safely
strapped into a car seat just a few yards away, breathless and terrified, sensing my second severing of bloodline.