Given (38 page)

“I'm not allowed to drink, but other than that, okay,” he said, ignoring my last statement. I began picking at a wayward piece of skin at the side of my thumbnail. “It's been
really
good, actually, since Gracie arrived.”

I stopped picking. Vernal had checked into a place for rich fuck-ups; Grace couldn't have afforded to pay for half an hour at the Outer Planet Hotel.

“The band council agreed to pick up her tab if she turned herself in,” Vernal said quickly. “She got here this morning — she's doing well. We both are. I just called to say that, well, thank you for taking care of everything for us. We won't forget how much you've done for us. We . . . ”

Us? We?
He kept talking, but I didn't listen. I held the phone away from my ear with the vague thought forming that Vernal should not be speaking so openly about what “we” had done. I worked it out: Hooker had taken the baby from the nursery and helped Grace make her escape. He called I-5, then left Given for me in the dumpster because he knew, everyone knew, I'd be the best one to look after him.

“I just don't want there to be any more lies,” Vernal said, as if I were the one who'd been duplicitous. I could smell the scent of baby powder over the long distance.

The night had swelled to blacken everything. I found a flashlight and went outside, descended the steps, stooped and entered the cobwebby darkness. I shone the torch around, and saw a clutter of pop cans that had blown out of the recycling box, faded newspaper flyers, a section of black plastic hose, and, next to the jar I had sealed my stash in, a syringe.

Most of my second baggy was gone. I pocketed the remaining ounce and went back into the house. Rainy was asleep in the living room, slumped bonelessly in a chair. I glanced at her arms to see if there any track marks but she had changed into my long-sleeved prison-issue pyjamas.

I woke her up, told her what I had found under the verandah, and accused her of stealing from me.

Rainy appeared discountenanced but recovered herself quickly.
What a verandah?
she asked.

Sometime during the night the twins manifested themselves into a north wind that banged around the farm making the house shudder and Toop whine to be let outside. The Bomb cried at the door until I brought him upstairs with me and let him lie fretting at the foot of my bed.

Rainy couldn't sleep. I think she knew her twins were leaving her that night. I couldn't help her; she wanted to know where the wind came from and where it went after it died.

It was still dark when she left our room and went out into the blizzard, and stood, both hands outstretched, trying to catch the snow. I watched from the window until she was barely visible. And then, because I was afraid she would freeze, or let the snow bury her, I drew a blanket around my shoulders, put on my cold, wet gumboots, and went to bring her inside. I apologized for being angry, said I would share the last baggy of coke with her and when it was gone we would both have to quit, face life with the skin torn away. Rainy said she was sorry, too. She swore she would quit the stealing habit she'd picked up from Frenchy, also.
I never make the same mistake once
.

We stayed up the rest of the night, hitching up the reindeer. I kept opening the door, so the twins, or Toop, could blow in, but there was nothing out there except the wind and it didn't seem interested in the tainted warmth we had to offer.

The blizzard let up at first light. I expected Toop to be at the door, and so did the Bomb. He raced from window to window, leaping at the glass until I had to threaten to tie him up. I wanted to drive out to look for Toop, but when I checked the driveway I knew we were snowed in, I wouldn't be going anywhere until the snow began to melt.

I told Rainy about Vernal's phone call, and that he and Gracie had hooked up.
She be wantin her kid back, she get done rehabilitatin. Then what you gon do? She leave him in a dumpster — next time he might not get so lucky.

I heated water, prepared a bottle. Wherever I moved, Given's large eyes followed me, and I worried for him. Mine was not a world to bring a child into.

I sat holding him against my breast, sniffing the top of his head, inhaling the new life that was both his and my own. He was so new. He made small contented sounds as his eyes fixed on me. Small moments of grace: shouldn't these be enough? I smiled down at Given, thinking, for the first time since I had escaped, what good fortune to be alive, what beauty mercy sometimes brings.

I know you're not supposed to tell your New Year's resolution beforehand, but I did, I told Given I was going to be the best possible mother to him. Given's eyebrows went shooting up, as if he was happy for me, as if he'd been afraid some part of me had been slipping away and leaving him, the way he'd been left before.

“When you're dancing with the devil, make sure you get the steps right.” I remembered the Tranquilandian saying. I never thought for a moment that I needed help. In less than a week I had undone all the good staying straight for twelve years had done me.

What, if anything, had I learned? That pain is what we do, what we must have, in order to feel alive?

How could I begin to list the number of things that had happened to escalate me from a simple state of painful being into the excruciatingly nauseated state I found myself in the morning of New Year's Eve? I only knew what day it was because Rainy came to tell me Vernal was back at St. Jude's after almost choking to death on a balloon he was blowing up for an AA dance at the rehab centre for rich fuckups.

Grace had left a message on the answering machine. Just as Rainy had predicted, she wanted her baby back.
She have a changin mind.

It had stopped snowing and the sun had come out, which made me feel more disgusted with myself for having returned so quickly to my old ways. The sun seemed to illuminate the black holes I wanted to stuff myself into. I found myself praying for rain; there was nothing holier than rain when it came to an excuse for getting obliterated. Rainy said I was praying up the wrong tree.
God no bell-hoppin nigga; you don't just go pushin on buttons get things sent up.

I knew what had to be done. I got out of bed, dressed, filled a thermos, packed a diaper bag — formula, wet wipes, diaper rash cream, two changes of clothing including mittens, a scarf and a tuque — then swaddled Given in blankets and laid him in the Moses basket. Rainy said Given seemed so glad to be with me she couldn't believe anyone would ever think I wasn't doing the best thing for Gracie's boy. I wasn't demanding ransom payments, and threatening to cut off his ears and send them to the welfare office if they didn't pay up. I told myself, too, it wasn't as if the couple waiting to adopt him had had time to get to know him, or fall in love with him, and were praying for the safe return of the child they had already started a college fund for: it wasn't as if Given was loved more by anyone than me.

Which was why I would do what I needed to do. I planned on getting my life back before it got all the way lost again.

Rainy didn't want me to leave. The roads would be bad, she said. She hid my boots and when I said I'd wear shoes she ripped the shoelaces out. How did I know that when I got to Hooker's cabin there would be anyone home to look after Son Jesus, she said?

If Toop had gone, I said, reassuring her, it could only mean one thing: he'd seen Hooker in the wind that had blown from the north, and he had gone home. I remembered Hooker saying wherever I am, Toop will find his way back to me. I told Rainy I had to take Given back to where he rightfully belonged. Given was a miracle crack-baby who'd survived on Coffee-Mate and been left in a dumpster. I figured if he'd made it this far, he'd survive whatever came next.

By the time we were ready to leave, in the early afternoon, the hearse doors were still frozen shut. I used a hair dryer on the end of an extension cord to thaw the locks, then set Given on the front seat in his basket. I let the Bomb sit between us, where he would keep us both warm. I found an old collar, and a leash; Rainy insisted he wear the rein-dog antlers Frenchy had stolen for him at the mall. Given seemed unusually fussy, and drank both bottles I'd filled for him before I even got the key in the ignition.

The engine coughed into life on the third try, and I coaxed it to a whine as Rainy brushed the snow from the roof; I watched it falling around her body as if she were the centre of her own storm. Afterwards she brushed the snow off the rear windows and used the scraper Frenchy had stolen for her to chip away at the ice that had formed on the windshield.

I went into reverse, and the tires started spinning. I put my head down on the wheel, fearing I could be stuck here until the sun had enough strength to melt the ice, but Rainy disappeared into the house, after telling me not to budge, and when she came back I could hear her, behind the rear wheels, muttering to herself. After a while she told me to go ahead, try backing up again, and when I went into reverse, this time I had traction: Rainy had scattered the Bomb's cat litter on the icy driveway under my tires.

You be da bomb now, road sister,
she cried, waving her arms over her head as if she were making a snow angel in the air.
You be catchin up wid me later, yo own self.

I waved goodbye as Rainy skated barefoot over the icy driveway, falling and laughing, then picking herself up and straightening her neck so her head sat in the right place. A couple of times I felt the rear wheels slip under me, as the hearse skated sideways. I reached out with one arm, instinctively, to stop the Moses basket from being thrown off the seat onto the floor, while I tried to straighten out the tires, and crept forward in first gear through a ghostly silent landscape.

There was no message today at the vegetable stand, no Christian vegetables for sale, but a few poinsettias in green plastic pots, marked down after Christmas.

The road was clear all the way to the village. When we passed the turn-off to the dump I saw it had been closed off by yellow crime-scene tape. Gracie's house had been cordoned off, also. The tape looked recent and was the most blatant reminder yet of the trouble I might be in.