The Blondes (32 page)

A few days later, one of the men came in with an image of Shelbee tattooed on his biceps. He rolled up the sleeve of his uniform to show the others. “Now it’s permanent,” he said.

August transferred before I was released. I guess it was in week seven of the WEE centre and week nineteen of you. One day he was there and the next he was gone. When I asked one of the other uniforms, who’d seemed to be a friend of his, the guy glared at me and said that August had been moved to another assignment at a different WEE, that they’d got some new rentals (meaning reservists) coming in—but what the fuck did I care anyway?

If the men hated me, though, the women were kinder. I don’t know if it was because of what I was going through specifically, if they would have been so kind in the event of an
ordinary pregnancy. The illnesses had petered out. Our room was unsullied. That probably didn’t hurt.

I don’t believe there is a bond between all women. I don’t believe that sisterhood is powerful. I believe just the opposite. I believe that these women were simply in the right circumstances to be kind. There was nothing to prevent them from it. We were stuck there, by this point more bored than terrified, growing more confident daily that we were going to get out, but feeling at the end of the world nonetheless. Every day we looked at the same damn field. Every day a small group played bridge. Another group collected the towels and bedding, even though it wasn’t their job, and sent it off in an army truck to be laundered. One woman said the best thing about being there was that she’d kicked smoking after forty years. What else did these women have to do but rub my back and feet and offer advice?

The teenager in my old room 8 had a small set of binoculars one of the men had lent her because she was just a kid, I guess, and she had an interest in stars. From the window, she showed me Polaris, the North Star, and how the Big Dipper always pointed to it, almost like it was trying to catch it in its spoon. I could see them, but only through my one eye, the part of my glasses that still had a lens. I covered the other with my hand. She told me if I thought of the Big Dipper as a goldfish net trying to scoop up Polaris, I’d always be able to find it. That was how her father had explained it to her. And she showed me the Great Bear, which was an easy one, she said, because the Dipper made up its shoulder. She also pointed out
Cassiopeia—at least she thought it was, she couldn’t be sure—Perseus, and Andromeda Nebula, the Chained Lady. But the Whale was hidden behind the edge of the roof and we couldn’t see that one. Cassiopeia was Andromeda’s mother. She bragged about her daughter’s beauty so much that she incurred the wrath of the sea. To save his kingdoms, her husband, Cepheus, chained their daughter to a rock—for the sea monster to take her and devour her. But Perseus wandered by and freed her, killed the monster, and became her husband. The teenager said she wished her name was Andromeda, and would I call her that?

“Okay,” I said. I couldn’t make out all the constellations; they were just stars to me. I couldn’t connect them in my mind’s eye like she did. We had to sit right up against the window just to see, our knees pressed against the glass, leaning forward. I could tell I was getting bigger because this was awkward for me. Nurse Ben had been taking my blood pressure and my weight; I had gained twenty pounds, although without the WEE’s catering truck I’ve not gained much since. I worry about that, actually. For someone who’s always struggled with weight, it’s odd that now I might suddenly be under what I ought to be for your sake.

“It’s my mom’s fault I’m here,” the girl proclaimed, as I passed the binoculars back to her. “She
made
me go visit my dad. I didn’t want to.”

She looked as though she weighed about as much as a fence post and I was fascinated by the amount of hate contained in her small frame. There she was, away from both her parents, away from all her friends, in a terrible place, and
instead of missing them, she spent her time cursing them. The girl said the stars in Andromeda Nebula—right at the knee, which I strained to find—were 2.7 million light-years away, the farthest object the human eye could see. For some reason, I remembered my mom’s hands on my head when she cut my hair, the way her fingers were gentle and she tucked and lifted the sections of it along my neckline. The smell of smoke rising up behind me from her Virginia Slims, sinking into my collar. For once I didn’t think about her boyfriends over the years, or her drinking. All of that felt as far away as this star that the girl, Andromeda, was trying to show me. She said her real name was—something lame by her own admission—Sandy, I think.

The next afternoon Sandy said she had an iPod Shuffle, but it didn’t work anymore because she’d run down the battery our first week there. We could pretend, though, she said. We each put an earbud in and lay back on her cot, very close together because the cot was so narrow. I had to keep one foot on the floor so as not to tumble off it. She sang a bunch of pop songs I didn’t know that had horribly cliché lyrics, and I nodded my head and felt old for the first time in my life. The only two songs I knew were “Hot N Cold” by Katy Perry and the Shelbee Brown song that the soldiers were always humming. I sang along to those two.

Sandy asked, didn’t I hate having my hair taken away? She said she was glad no one important could see her. I told her I’d never liked my hair much anyway, and since it could kill me now, I really didn’t miss it.

“You’re so totally brave,” she said.

She had a squirrelled-away bottle of nail polish, which she used to paint my toenails pitch black.

My midsection had grown so big that my toes seemed as if they were on the other side of a wall—far enough away that bending over to wash my feet in the shower had become awkward. Women from my old room started coming around the stock closet where I slept and touching me and suggesting names. The ultrasoundist arrived again. This time I looked when she offered to show me the screen. You resembled the brand of honey where the bottle is shaped like a bear: transparent with nubs in familiar places. When she showed me your face, I strained to figure out if you looked like me or Karl, but it was too soon. You wore an expression, but you simply looked like baby—and yet not baby. More like Ghost Baby. Translucent Baby. You were rolling around a lot, bringing your hands up as if you were at a dance party, which amazed me because I couldn’t feel a thing. You were 323 grams. The technician reconfirmed that the smear of you, with its three parallel lines, was girl. This was your labia. The women had a heyday with the name lists after that. The younger women, in their thirties like Michelle Morrell, suggested trendy names that sounded like perfume brands. Names like Destiny and Serenity and London. The older women suggested names from decades past, names that seemed like they ought to come with polished buckles and bows attached. Names like Susan and Claire and Christina. I listened as if in a fog.

Nothing much changed until the last week of the WEE,
and then—that was when I felt you move. I was lying in bed the first time: you were like a sleepy kitten rubbing its ears against my abdomen. The feeling was so fleeting I thought I must have imagined it. Then, the next day, I was standing at the food cart, filling my coffee, and you kicked twice low down in my pelvis, a kind of knocking, hard enough that I said “Oh!” out loud. So hard it was as if you were trying to break out.

The day we were freed, the soldiers didn’t tell us in advance. We had our breakfast and our showers, those of us who got them that day. They didn’t send us for shaving—that was the only clue. Then the soldiers started coming around, barking that it was time to go. We all looked at each other, like,
Really
? We didn’t believe they meant it. A couple women had been keeping calendars, charting when everything happened—who was menstruating when, how long we’d been there, which tests they ran and on whom—but even they were caught off guard. They had thought it would be the following week, but either they’d missed a couple days somewhere, or else the government had simply tired of paying for us.

There was only one shuttle we could take: into Hamilton. Many of the women were from farther-flung areas in Ontario—Owen Sound, Kingston, Ottawa; a couple travelling together were even bound for Winnipeg, Manitoba—but Hamilton was our only option. That was how far the government was willing to pay for us to be shuttled back to civilization. The soldiers gave us paperwork that said we’d been cleared by Canada
Customs. The teenager, Sandy, rolled hers up into a tube and made trumpet sounds through it.

“Dear, you’re going to need that,” one of the older women said to her, even though it seemed to me like a useless document now that we were free to go.

We were allowed to use the phone at the Hamilton armoury, where we were dropped. We lined up and one by one each took a turn, and one by one people came to collect us. When I dialled Larissa’s number, I got a prerecorded voicemail saying the number was not in service. The same thing occurred when I phoned my mom and Richard. I tried to remember the numbers of other friends, like Addy and Jude from my university department, but I’d seldom called them, or if I had, it had been via my cellphone and I’d just hit the big green Phone icon and hadn’t ever thought to look closely at the number. Desperately, I called Karl’s cell, then his home number. I got a message saying that he and Grace were at their cabin. I wasn’t sure if it was the same recorded greeting that had been there two and a half months before or a new one. This time I left a message.

“I’ve been at a Women’s Entry and Evaluation centre,” I explained, using the full name in case WEE wasn’t commonly known, “I’m free to go. I can’t get through to anyone, and I’m just desperate for a ride.
Desperate
,” I stressed, and gave my location. I didn’t apologize or make excuses for calling.

By late afternoon, the day was greying, and all of the other women but one were gone. Some lived too far for pickups, but someone had phoned someone who had phoned someone
who … and they’d all been shuttled off. No one said goodbye, I noticed. Women just hopped into vehicles and sped away, knowing—hoping—they’d never see the others again. Even Sandy left without a backward glance. The one remaining woman was clutching her paperwork under her coat against her chest because she didn’t want it to get wrinkled or blow away. When no one showed up to collect us, I told her I was going to walk to the Greyhound station. I asked her twice if she wanted to come, but the woman just sat there crying as if she hadn’t heard me. I didn’t know her—she was from room
I
—so as heartless as you may think this was, I left her there. I did not want to get stuck at night in a city I didn’t know.

Asking directions, I managed to get to the Greyhound Station, and there I did the only thing I could do: I begged. It was surprisingly easy. Even for an expert thrift-store shopper my charity clothes were mismatched, not nearly warm enough for the weather, and I was bald and pregnant, wobbling like a penguin. I had no ID, no money, no possessions to speak of. “Excuse me, can you help me? I’ve been in quarantine for eight weeks and I’ve just been cleared …” I held up my papers as if they were a diploma. “I have nothing and I have to get to Toronto.”

“Get away from me,” one woman said to me. She was blonde, and I remember being surprised that there were blondes still in the world.

The other passersby were more forthcoming. I put on the glasses with one lens so that I could make eye contact with people at a distance. There was a way to stand, I found,
where I looked even more pregnant than I actually was. The women in the WEE had been able to tell, but they’d had nothing else to think about in that place. Strangers on the street, on the other hand, had many distractions. I undid my thin jacket, stuck my gut out, and placed my hand on my belly, and finally they noticed. Beneath the skin you kicked as if you were eager to participate. People are kinder to the unborn than they are to women themselves, and soon I had my ticket.

LET ME TELL YOU, BABY
, when I got off the bus in Toronto at Bay and Dundas, I literally could have fallen to my knees and kissed the pavement of my city.

It was December and there were Christmas lights and advertisements for new gadgets just for him, and spa and tanning certificates just for her. Tanning salons and sun beds seemed to be the gift for women that year. S
HOPPING, DINING, NIGHTLIFE, JOY!
a sign declared. I had to pull out my glasses to see it, and I didn’t care what I looked like, wearing frames with only one lens. Another sign read G
ET HER A GIFT SHE REALLY NEEDS—A GIFT FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY—THE
D
ANCO
R
AZOR
. Coffee shops were playing carols and lights blinked and shone above shelves displaying silver espresso pots. I watched a fat baby wearing a hat shove a brownie in its mouth,
leaving chocolate smeared across its face. A man was standing outside the doors of the bus station, smoking, peering into the distance, just waiting for somebody. I couldn’t believe how normal and goddamn beautiful it all was.

I used a precious quarter to phone again, finally managed to get through to Larissa’s cellphone, and left a message telling her I had made it into Toronto and was on my way over. In the middle of an icy city, dark and bright, thronged with people in toques and turbans, scarves and mittens, I made my way to Larissa and Jay’s.