As She Grows (24 page)

By now Jasmyn is off the couch, grabbing Tammy so I can get to her. Only, I don’t even want to. For whatever reason, I don’t even want to fight. Which ends up not to even matter, because Jasmyn needs no invitation to do damage.

“Let go of me, you fuckin’ cunt,” Tammy yells at her. “What the fuck does this have to do with you?”

“’Cause I can’t stand you,” she says. And then Tammy and Jasmyn start going at it. Slapping and pulling hair and kicking around the TV room. It doesn’t stress me out too much since I know Jasmyn is just messing around with Tammy. I know, because if Jasmyn were serious, Tammy would be down in a second.

Within a few minutes, Pat and Miranda are already in the room, yelling at me to go upstairs and get some air. They jump between the two interlocked bodies and split them up. Jasmyn immediately backs off, but Tammy starts kicking, her legs going crazy in the air. It’s like she’s gone completely crazy and we all just shut up and stand still, shocked, because she’s absolutely losing it. Even Jasmyn stays back. Tammy starts knocking over chairs and spit flies out of her mouth. “You want a piece of me? You want a piece of me?” she yells in my direction, but Miranda is blocking her way. Finally Pat moves in, puts a hold on Tammy, and brings her down to the ground. But Tammy keeps kicking and yelling that she’s fucking going to kill me, so then Miranda pins her other shoulder to the floor and Tammy lies there flat out on her stomach, slowly giving up the struggle. “Let me go, man,” she mumbles, her face pressed into the carpet. Pat speaks calmly into her ear, telling her to just relax. And after a while all you can hear is Tammy’s breathing, slow and heavy. I start to feel all shaky and strange and I just have to get out of there.

Mute Mary arrives home while I’m standing outside the front door and I explain to her what just happened. “How fucked is that? What a nutcase,” says Mary. And I realize I’d never talked with her before, really talked, and she’s kind of okay. She’s being really friendly to me for a reason; she says she’s pissed at Tammy because she keeps borrowing money and smokes off her and doesn’t pay back. She bitches about how Tammy keeps on making up stupid lies about giving money to her family or about
someone stealing it. And we start laughing about how weird she is. About how she always picks at her crotch and how she stinks up the bathroom, even when she’s taking a pee.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Tammy comes tearing out the front door. Before I know it, her fist is in my face and my hands fling out instinctively, hitting flesh and teeth and bone. With my eyes closed, my other senses sharpen. I taste blood in my mouth. I hear Jasmyn and Miranda and Mary screaming at Tammy to back off. We all become one large, thrashing cluster and somehow move out onto the lawn. I break free from Tammy’s grasp and stare in disbelief at the clump of my hair still in her clenched fist. But I don’t go after her because, with the sudden release, thoughts of the baby fill my head. My hands move in front of my stomach, Jasmyn jumps in front of me as Mary goes to hold back Tammy. And we’re all out there on the front lawn, four girls in bare feet, screaming and shouting at each other. Tammy must finally realize that it’s three against one and she takes off down the street, barefoot, her white oversized T-shirt blob fading into the distance. For some reason, I chase after her and behind me I can hear Jasmyn’s heavy breathing. Within seconds she passes me, wide stride, her heels kicking up high behind her.

Lucky for Tammy a bus pulls in at the stop on the corner and she clambers up onto it, racing to the back window as it pulls away. I catch up to Jasmyn, who is now standing, surrendering hands up in the air. Breathless, I hold one hand on her shoulder for balance. We watch the bus converge into darkness, Tammy’s smiling, crazy face against the back window, her fingertips pressed against glass. Flicking her tongue like a snake and giving us the finger.

“Look at her—she’s fuckin’ nuts,” Jasmyn says.

“Yeah,” I say.

“You’re a bit of a screwball yourself,” Jasmyn turns to me, a smile widening on her face. She playfully pushes my shoulder.

“Certified,” I joke, and we share a smoke that Jasmyn finds in her jacket pocket on the way back.

“Look at my nose,” Jasmyn says, pulling one nostril to the side. “The earring’s sunk in. Fuckin’ bitch got me right in the face.” I look closely at the almost invisible glint of diamond under the streetlight and start laughing. “Shut up! Hurts like hell,” she says, sticking her finger up her nostril.

“You’ll live.”

I hold my hand up to my jaw and move it around a bit. “Look at your face,” Jasmyn says laughing. “You’re going to be one ugly bitch tomorrow.”

“I know,” I say, picking out the drying blood from the edge of my nose. And we recount the whole event, from the TV room to the front lawn, play by play. It’s all like one big joke. But our smiles quickly fade when we see Staff on the front porch, arms crossed, staring down our approach.

“You’re going to be in shit,” Jasmyn warns.

The next day the group home calls for a family meeting. I tell Pat I won’t go, that I’ve had enough meetings about every little thing. I tell her I’m sick of talking with everyone and never getting anywhere. “I’m all worded out,” I say, poking at my fat lip.

But I don’t have a choice. She tells me the house is calling the meeting and it’s obligatory. Only it’s Aunt Sharon who comes, not Elsie. We sit in the front room of the house, sinking into the worn couches, knees level with our chins, while Pat and Miranda tower over us from straight-back chairs.

I jokingly stick my tongue out at Miranda, but her face remains fixed in a serious gaze. “What!” I blurt out. “Is this
Invasion of the
Body Snatchers
? Where’s Miranda?” I wave my hand in front of her glare, as if trying to snap her out of it. “Earth to Miranda!”

Pat ignores my comment and starts the meeting. “We called this meeting to review your time here, Snow. But we are also concerned about your behaviour lately.” She darts a look to Aunt Sharon. And it starts to bother me that Aunt Sharon is sitting in
this room, as if she had anything to do with my life. I look to Miranda who is now staring down at her notebook in her lap. “We’d like to hear from you first, Snow. Do you have anything to say about your recent conduct?”

All heads turn to me, staring, waiting. The pressure is unbearable. I have no idea what Pat wants me to say. I almost feel like just blurting out that I’m pregnant. Just to prove how clueless they are. Instead, I stare at the ground and shrug my shoulders. I try my hardest to find the words, but all I come up with is, “I don’t know, maybe I’m going through a phase?” I look at Pat, hoping this is the right answer.

“I think I can fill in the blanks a little bit here,” Aunt Sharon pipes up. “There were some family things that happened last week. Snow found out some things about her birth mother that were upsetting. And, well, with Mark gone, I think she’s just having a bit of a rough time.”

“What are you talking about?” I challenge. “This has nothing to do with Mark.” And all of a sudden it pisses me off that Aunt Sharon is talking like she knows me, like she has any idea what I’m about.

Aunt Sharon looks quickly to Pat and then at me. “I thought you might be acting out because you’re hurt about Mark. I thought I’d help you make them understand—”

“You don’t know me. You think because you take me out for dinner, you know anything about me?”

“I just wanted to help.”

“I don’t need your help,” I say. “I never needed your help.” It occurs to me how great Aunt Sharon must look to Pat and Miranda. How supportive she must seem, like she’s all concerned about me. But if she was so concerned, she would have let me live with her.

Aunt Sharon turns to Pat, a look of embarrassment on her face. “I think she’s a little upset at me too.”

“I can speak for myself.” I cross my arms and face the door, my back entirely to Aunt Sharon.

“Are your family concerns something you can talk about with me, Snow?” Miranda asks me.

“No.”

Pat straightens her back and shuffles the papers in front of her. “Well, I guess we’re at a bit of a roadblock here. Perhaps you can talk about what’s bothering you with Miranda, later on.”

Anger surges through me and I feel the need to escape. I stomp my foot on the ground. I can’t stand these people on my back. They don’t help me when I need help, and then they criticize me when I mess up. I turn to Pat and look her straight in the eyes and then I speak slowly so she can fully understand: “I . . . don’t . . . want . . . to . . . fucking . . . talk. Got it?”

Pat’s eyes become narrow and her jaw muscles start twitching on the side of her face. “Well, regardless of what’s going on in your personal life, we need to have a safe environment here. And that means getting along with everyone, including those you don’t like.”

“I didn’t start that,” I snap at her.

Pat holds her hand up to stop me. “We’re not getting into it,” she says firmly.

“But—”

“Drop it!” she says sharply. “What I’m saying to you, I’ve said to Tammy as well.” She speaks in generalizations, about certain “incidents” both here and at school. And about the dramatic change in me since my arrival. She makes it sound like I’ve done a thousand things wrong and nothing right. Pat does most of the talking, like she’s the heavy, with Miranda jumping in every once in a while to ask me my point of view.

At the end of the meeting, we all stand at the door and Miranda tells Aunt Sharon that I’m a very special girl and I have a lot of potential. She says she would like me to get into a co-op program where I can live with just one adult role model and a few other girls in a house. “I don’t think this is a positive environment for Snow,” she says. And I storm past all of them and head up to my room.

Jasmyn asks me to her new boyfriend’s party on Saturday night. His name is Hayden, he’s twenty-four, and he has a blond goatee and tattoos of snakes and fire all over his arms. He screams in a band, pisses on the audience, and has tons of girls after him. I tell her I’ll go, just to get away from Staff.

“They call it the fuck-hut,” Jasmyn claims as we enter Hayden’s apartment, “but that’s just a joke.” Looking around, I get the feeling it’s not a joke at all. The walls are painted black, the ceilings are red, and there are massive artsy murals of what look like naked girls with nipples the size of melons all over the walls.

There are people everywhere and the music is so loud it vibrates the floor. “Hayden’s roommate’s an artist. Isn’t he amazing?” she yells, as we stand below a mural full of dizzying thick strokes of paint and a glob of steel wool sticking out from where the woman’s crotch would be.

“What’s that?”

“Her kooch, stupid.” Jasmyn laughs and I follow her down the narrow corridor, jammed with people. Some guys nod at Jasmyn as she passes by, but no guys even look at me, and I figure that I must be giving off some pregnant scent because they wouldn’t be able to see my stomach under my bulky sweatshirt. In the living room, spliffs are being served like appetizers on a tray. We find Hayden in the kitchen. He is gorgeous and sexy and his blue eyes penetrate your soul, just like Jasmyn said. She hangs off him, laughing too much at his jokes and agreeing too much with everything he says. He gets us drinks all night, mine with only a little alcohol.

“She’s sick,” Jasmyn is quick to say, but I know it’s not because she’s concerned about covering for me. It’s more because she’s embarrassed her friend doesn’t drink.

After a few glasses, I go to the washroom because my head is spinning and I think I’m going to throw up. I lean against the counter, staring at my face as it drips and contorts in the mirror. And I realize it can’t be alcohol making me feel so crazy, there had to be something more in the drinks. The music pounds in my head and a person appears in the mirror behind me. At first I can’t make it out, but then I focus hard and see that it’s Hayden. He’s taking my hair and brushing it off my face, his head moves in close, hot breath on my eyelids. Then his lips are on mine, hard and sucking. He jams his tongue down my throat. The door shuts, voices are distant and vague. Hayden pries my mouth open, sucking my protests into his wet mouth. As my limp hands try to push him away, he starts to get all forceful and rough. And then the clinking of his belt buckle shatters in my head like glass.

He pushes me to my knees and tries to stick his dick in my mouth, but my head falls back, my neck muscles weaken. He swears angrily, calls me a cunt and slut, grips both his hands on my head, and forces himself into my mouth, squeezing my head harder and harder, yanking my hair, and I squeal in response, like this little pig, which turns him on even more. And I think he’s going to kill me. He will twist my neck. I will die tonight. I taste blood in my mouth as I allow my teeth to rip the inside of my lips because I am terrified of what he might do if I cut him. I focus all
my energy on not throwing up. Jasmyn pounds on the door as her boyfriend slams his body into me, coarse pubic hair jamming up my nose.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” he says when he’s done, releasing my head and zipping up his fly. The warm fluid drains from my numb lips, down my chin. I lean forward, throw up all over his feet, and he kicks me to the floor where I crumble onto my own puke.