Y: A Novel (35 page)

“Shannon?” Julian calls.

I leave Julian’s father standing on the stairs and walk into the kitchen. Julian’s
got both hands on the kitchen table and is half bent over, grimacing, bracing himself.

“I ate this huge omelet before bed last night,” he says, clearing his throat. “Bad
idea.” He shakes his head like a dog coming out of water, blinks a few times, and
stares into one of the pots of vinegar.

I put my hand under my nose to stop the vinegar smell from reaching me, but it’s too
late, and I have to clench my jaw to keep from gagging.

Julian taps his foot on the floor, turns to the fridge, and opens a can of diet ginger
ale.

“Can I have some ginger ale?”

Julian nods and passes me a cold can.

He looks so ugly in the harsh light of the morning. That lip, those teeth. He grimaces
again and pushes a handful of antacids into his mouth. I can hear his father coughing,
and the sun has risen, and the heater has come on and is blowing hot air up through
the floor vents. There’s nothing I need to do or say to him. It’s been done. He’s
done.

“You’re always welcome here.” He holds out his hand, but I don’t take it. He shrugs,
drops his hand to his side, and takes out a broom and dustpan from the closet and
starts sweeping up the broken glass. I watch
him for a second. He bends down and slides the glass into the dustpan and shakes it
into the trash. He moves jerkily, as if someone is directing his movements with a
remote control. I leave him and walk into the living room.

There are no photographs, nothing on the walls. No art. The hardwood is covered with
a threadbare Persian rug, half of it faded from the sun. Sometimes I feel so weak,
as if nothing has ever really happened to me. I feel as weak as a sponge. I walk to
the window and set my can of ginger ale on the sill. I put my hand on the glass, leave
a handprint. The glass is cold under my palm, and my hand is damp when I take it away.
This mark is all I’ll leave Julian with. This is the last he’ll ever see of me. But
I’ll always be here in this house, like a ghost.

XXI.

i
am an easy birth, as was Eugene. My mother pants, like Jo taught her to do, and Luella
tries to get her to relax.

My head appears, then retracts, and Luella makes space with her fingers to prevent
my mother from tearing. Each contraction brings me closer and closer to being born.
The air in the bedroom is cool and sharp on Yula’s legs and somehow soothing.

When Luella sees me start to crown, she puts her hand on either side of my head to
guide me out. She pushes down, freeing one of my shoulders, then pulls up to free
the other. Yula pants and pushes hard, and in an instant I am in Luella’s arms, slippery
as a fish, my eyes clenched shut. Luella strokes my nose to release the mucus and
amniotic fluid, then rests me between Yula’s breasts, my head slightly below my body
to help drain out the fluid. My arms and legs reach out aimlessly, quiver and paw
the air, then curl back in again. My mother’s hands are trembling. I am half the size
of Eugene when he was born and covered in soft, dark downy fur. Luella rubs me clean
with a towel, wipes the vernix from my tiny face and body until I start to cry. I
have skinny little limbs and my skin is red and wrinkled. My mother listens for my
breath in the dark, silent morning. Luella dries me off as best she can and places
me back on my mother’s chest, then covers us both in a flannel bedsheet.

Yula feels her womb begin to contract again and then the pressure as the placenta
moves down. There is a small gush of blood, and Luella guides the placenta out until
she is holding the entire thing in her hands. She inspects it to make sure it is all
in one piece, that there are no ragged edges, nothing left behind. She feels Yula’s
abdomen to make sure her uterus is properly contracted and tells her that she is okay,
that everything is going to be okay.

My mother hadn’t expected me to be this small. Her heart pounds. She is holding such
a small, delicate thing. I frighten her. I am too small to seem human. My eyes are
still shut tight, and I’ve gone silent. Everything she should not have done rushes
at her—stayed out that night, left Eugene by himself, gotten high, taken me into the
city to be born. The weight of her decisions settles into her heart like rocks. She
has killed her child. Will she kill another? I look so small and helpless that she’s
not sure how I’m even alive.

She feels my breath on her skin and looks into my little potato-size face. I am brand
new. I know nothing. I know no one. The thought comes to her in a bright flash. I
must never know her. I must never know what a monster she is. I deserve better. Someone
will raise me here, in the city. Someone will raise me right. A real family.

As she lies in Luella’s bed, she plans her death. She could walk to Dallas Road and
drown herself in the ocean. She wants it to be painful. She wants to suffer. She searches
her mind for options. She could probably get into the lobby of View Towers if she
waited long enough for someone to walk outside, hold open the door. Oh, hey, let me
in, okay? It would be that easy. Then it would be a matter of getting into someone’s
apartment on the top floor. Take the elevator. Wait. Could she just knock on all the
doors until someone answered, then push her way through and out onto the balcony?
Could she do that? One of Harrison’s dealers used to live there. If only she could
remember his name. Maybe in a little while she’ll remember. In her mind she sees herself
falling toward the ground. It pleases her. I will never know her. I will never know
about any of this.

Luella rests her hand on Yula’s arm. Her fingers are covered in delicate silver rings,
the nails neatly manicured and painted peach. Yula stares
at her own hands, the cuticles overgrown and neglected, the nails deeply ridged and
caked with dirt. They are still the hands of a girl.

“I miss your mother,” Luella says. “Strange as she was.”

“Me, too.”

“She named you after me. Did you know that?”

Yula shakes her head. “Why doesn’t my father like you?”

Luella pauses. “Your mother and father—”

“Had a toxic relationship. I know.”

“At its simplest,” Luella says, “it was jealousy. She loved me more than she loved
him. He wanted her to be in love with him, and only him, not someone else, too.”

Yula shuts her eyes. The thought of Eugene overwhelms her, and she can’t bear to hear
any more about anyone else’s pain, anyone else’s history.

“Please,” she says. “Please take her.” She hands me to Luella, who cradles me while
my mother struggles to get up. She sits on the toilet and lets the blood drain out
of her. She hears Luella stripping the bed.

She could take me to the hospital. She could go to jail. Every choice seems feeble
somehow. Every choice feels wrong. She searches her mind for the name of Harrison’s
dealer. She likes the idea of jumping off the balcony of View Towers. It seems so
easy, so quick. If she goes to the ocean she’ll have to wade in, then let herself
be carried away by the tide. There is a chance she’ll fight it; there is a chance
she’ll fight to stay alive. But if she jumps? She likes the finality of this choice.
This is what she will do.

“Luella?” she calls from the doorway to the bathroom.

Luella appears in the dim light of the hallway, holding me in her arms.

“I need,” my mother begins, her words slow and careful because she is lying, “I need
to be alone with my baby for a while. I’d just like to rest for a bit and think things
over. I need to do this before we go to the hospital.”

Luella looks at my little face. I am breathing; I seem to be okay. And Yula is right—I
will likely be taken away, and she will be arrested. Luella nods. She will give my
mother as long as she wants before they decide what to do.

In the dark of the bedroom, my mother waits. It is three in the morning. She nurses
me, and I fall asleep. My mother waits another hour, then pulls herself from the bed,
leaving me momentarily, and peeks into the living room. Luella has fallen asleep on
the couch, the television on mute, the screen displaying hundreds of small birds gathered
at the shoreline in search of food. She goes back into the bedroom and swaddles me
in her gray sweatshirt as tightly as she can. She pulls her coveralls over her body
and finds a pad of paper and a pencil on the bedside table.

This is the most important thing I’ve ever asked of anyone in my life. I need you
to forget that I was here and that this baby was born. I’m going to leave her at the
hospital and then be on my way. I do not ever want her to know about me or Harrison.
Please do not tell anyone. Please. I will take her to the hospital, and then I’m going
to disappear. Please—whatever you do—don’t tell anyone about this. I want her to grow
up free from the burden of all this. I want her to have a wonderful life. Such a wonderful
life. This will not happen if she knows anything about me or how her brother died.
I never want her to know these things. Please do this for me. It is the right thing
to do, I think.

Together we creep past Luella’s sleeping form. My mother unhooks the chain and opens
the front door inch by inch, holding her breath, until the door is shut behind her
and she is standing in the cold night air. She rests me on the bench seat of Joel
and Edwin’s truck and tries to start the vehicle but the ignition won’t catch. She
curses them and their fleet of old shitty cars, wrenches the door open, and slides
out of the truck. She lifts me out and holds me tight to her body. She looks toward
Park Boulevard and the big white apartment building that looks like a wedding cake.
It is too far to walk to the hospital. She’ll never make it. It would take hours and
too many people would see her. She presses her face against mine and listens to my
breathing. I am okay. I am okay. I am so small, but I am okay.

She could rest me on the doorstep of one of the apartments, but it is so early, and
it is so cold, and what if no one walks by? She could ring the doorbell, but she’d
never get away in time. She walks down Heywood Avenue, toward downtown. It is 4:30
a.m.

High above the trees of Beacon Hill Park, my mother sees the towers of Christ Church
Cathedral. She thinks of the old video Harrison showed her once of him singing “Once
in Royal David’s City” as a choirboy. How he stood stiffly in his maroon cassock and
white ruff, hands clasped, and sang the solo part while the rest of the choir stood
behind him. How sweet and innocent his face was; how sweet and innocent all the boys’
faces were.

She decides she will take me to the cathedral. She will give me the most majestic
start to my life. She will set me beneath the blue front doors, beneath the tympanum.
She heads up Quadra Street and a few cars pass, but no one stops and no one slows
down. I am so small that it looks as if she’s carrying a loaf of bread or a little
stuffed animal. The cathedral rises up ahead of her, and she shifts her weight. She
is so tired that she is limping. She wills the heat of her body to transfer into mine.
If she can just get me to the cathedral. If I can just survive.

She crosses Burdett, carries me up the wheelchair ramp that leads to the cathedral’s
entrance. The cathedral looms cold and gray in front of her. As she kneels to set
me down, the hideous thought enters her mind that I will not be discovered here either.
It is too early. She sees my face grow gray in her mind, my little body cease to move.
She thought it would feel sacred, but instead the long shadows from the spires drag
over my face, and she fears that I will be taken away by demons. She looks down at
me. I lie motionless on the concrete. It is too much, and she snatches me up into
her arms.

The possibility exists, too, that she could end it for us both. She sits on the steps
and rocks me in her arms. We could die together. Not everyone was meant to survive.
Not everyone was meant for this earth. But there is such a sweetness coming from me
that she cannot bear this thought either.

She traces my features with her finger, explores the divot between my lips and nose.
It is Eugene’s face; it is mine. My cheeks are full and heavy.
My lips gummy and malleable. My brow is furrowed, as though I sense something is wrong.
Still, I have yet to open my eyes.

Across the street, the fluorescent lights of the YMCA flicker on. The Y opens early,
my mother recalls. The sky is getting lighter, an eerie purple-blue. She will wait
a few minutes, then she will leave me in front of the glass doors. I will be found
immediately, she thinks. I will survive this. She wishes she could leave me with something
beautiful—a conch shell, a gemstone, something to be cherished. She fingers the Swiss
Army Knife in her pocket. It’s all she has, and she tucks it between my feet: a parting
gift.

And so my mother, a girl in navy coveralls, walks down the steps of Christ Church
Cathedral with a bundle wrapped in gray, her body bent in the cold wet wind of the
summer morning. She opens her mouth as if to scream, but there is no sound here, just
the calls of birds. The wind gusts and her coveralls blow against her body, framing
her belly as she walks toward the YMCA, exposing the tops of her brown workman’s boots.
Her coveralls are stained with motor oil, her shoes far too big. She is a small, fine-boned
woman, with deep brown hair tied back in a bun and a pale, startled face with wild,
moon-gray eyes. There is a coarse, masculine look to her, a meanness. Even in the
chill, her brow is beaded with sweat. She stops at the entrance to the parking lot,
then takes a step forward and looks around her. The street is full of pink and gold
light from the sun. The wet of last night’s rain is still present on the street, on
the sidewalk, on the buildings’ reflective glass. Everything shines pink and gold
and blue. If anyone sees her, she will lose her nerve. She looks up again, and the
morning sky is as blue as a peacock feather.