As She Grows (30 page)

I think for a moment. There are many reasons to have a baby. If you want to leave home, but you can’t afford it. If you want to have your man’s first child, so you have baby-mom rights over the other girls he fucks. If you want a baby to make you finally straighten out your screwed-up life. If you want to prove to your mother that you aren’t as useless as she says, that she’s the one with the problem. If you want your boyfriend to commit. If you want someone to love you.

“I didn’t choose to be here. My group home made me come. And I don’t live with my mother because she’s dead.” I shrug my shoulders, indicating I’m done.

“I’m sure we are all sorry to hear that. And thank you for sharing something so personal and obviously painful.” Then Karyn turns
to the group: “Let’s all tell Snow a little bit about ourselves.” She makes each girl speak for about a minute, about how they didn’t expect this to happen, about how it was a mistake. Despite what they say, in some ways, I know they’ve all planned this. In some ways, I think they all knew this would happen to them, sooner or later. The way rich kids just know they’ll probably have a car and a university degree by the time they’re twenty-five. I look around the room, listen to all these hopeless stories, and silently add mine to the list:
If I put it off too long, I have no choice.

School for us pregnant girls is in the basement of the house. It’s a tiny room with a large centre table and lopsided bookcases. On the walls are student projects about parenting and tenant rights. The teacher, Miss Lucy, wears a wool sweater with zoo animals embroidered on it. She has white hair and a warm smile and is the kind of teacher you’d imagine instructing grade three children. “Where are the others?” I ask during my academic meeting, motioning to the empty room.

“Who?” She seems surprised at the question. “Oh, the students.” She waves her hand in the air, gesturing for me not to worry. “There are always doctor’s appointments, upset stomachs, counselling. Sometimes the room is packed, sometimes there is no one. Today is just one of those days. Three young women just graduated from high school here last week.”

She asks me questions about my last school, about past conflicts with teachers, about my courses. She is impressed with my half credit of grade ten advanced math. “I think this might be more relevant to your needs right now,” she says, sliding a parenting package across the table. “Most young women really like the course. You’ll still continue your other subjects, it’s just
that this will be important as well. It’s worth a full credit.” I reach out to accept the bound photocopied pages and she gets up to leave.

“Can I have my math book too?” I ask, annoyed at her assumption that I’m nothing more than a pregnant belly.

“Of course!” she says, obviously impressed with my interest. She goes into her office and returns with some algebra sheets. She tells me she’ll need a day to get the rest of my work organized. “So why don’t you work on the package for now?”

At first I’m resentful, as if our lives are made to stop now that we are pregnant. I stare back at my photocopied package. I flippantly tick off lists, scratch in fill-in-the-blanks, and invert my true or false.
A woman loses a tooth for every baby she has:
true, of course. When asked about my child’s values, I reject the suggested adjectives—
controlled, restrained, self-disciplined—
and create my own:
slutty, bitchy, catty
. I get back the first unit with a big red F on the top-right corner. Miss Lucy tells me that I can make up the mark by completing a supplementary writing assignment and puts it down on the table. “A minimum of three pages,” she says.

I’m excited to accept the challenge of failure. My vengeful pen ready, I flip the page.

A good mother is . . .

I am wordless. Feel slapped in the face. No thoughts come to my mind, not even rude ones. I sit for what seems like hours, trying to think of something to say, something funny or stupid— or thoughtful. But I stay wordless, watch the second hand coast around in circles, listen to Miss Lucy in her office on the phone, talking to her dry cleaners, then a teacher, then Rogers Cable. I doodle on the page, flowers and stars, and just when I think I’m about to go nuts, I add one word to her incomplete sentence and it’s like a door opens in my head.

A good mother is
. . . NOT . . . someone who borrows her daughter’s bathrobe and returns it with cum stains. A good mother is not someone who lets her child stay up all night to watch TV or just laughs when an eight-year-old tells the grocery clerk to fuck off. A good mother is not someone who leaves condoms in an unflushed toilet or bad milk in the fridge. A good mother doesn’t let her boyfriend smash her head in and then say afterward it’s okay because it was her fault.

I have so much more to say, I fill up four pages, both sides. At the end I write,
A good mother is not mine
. I staple it and leave it on Miss Lucy’s desk. In class the next day she gives me back the paper, a large purple A with the words “good detail” scribbled beside it. “I thought your piece was very insightful, Snow,” she says as she passes by my desk. “I like the twist. Knowing what a good mother is not is as important as knowing what a good mother is.” I feel her warm hand rest on my shoulder. “Good job.”

I make a point of working on the parenting booklet after that. I continue to tick off lists and match definitions and then, after a while, it’s like I can’t really even bring myself to do my math or geography. I compare breast- and bottle-feeding, write paragraphs on disciplining, and list ten ways to childproof a home. I create logical consequences, set appropriate limits, copy a list of factors that affect the healthy development of the fetus. I read about Erik Erikson’s theory of personalities. I fill out charts on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and learn that I have no self-actualization in my life. I read about a study on rats that somehow proves close contact with the baby once it’s born is important. Then I stare out the window and wonder how in the world rats can tell us anything about the behaviour of people.

Every girl gets an individual meeting with the supervisor, Ms. Crawl, during her first few days, but since she’s been on vacation I’ll meet her my third week at Beverley. Ms. Crawl has been here thirty years and Sky says she runs the place with an iron fist. Sky says that when Ms. Crawl walks into the room, everybody loses her smile, even the youth workers. On the day of my meeting, Sky sits on the end of my bed and preps me for what she calls “the initiation into hell.” She explains the best way to handle it is just to remain quiet, and if I think I’m going to lose it on her, I should just start counting the pencils in the jug on her desk. “The others think she’s out for blood,” she says. “They think it has something to do with abortion guilt. But I think she just needs a good fuck.” Then she makes a tight fist and forces her finger into the hole to demonstrate. “You know, she’s all tight and rigid.”

I sit in Ms. Crawl’s spacious office, to the right of the house entrance, and wait for her. The large wooden desk is spotless. Papers are neatly highlighted with yellow and pink stripes. Even the sticky notes are placed with precision.

“Good morning, Miss Snow,” Ms. Crawl says as she enters the room. She looks exactly the way I had imagined. Pointy nose and chin, bony knuckles, as if she even considered flesh to be excessive. She begins by asking me questions about my pregnancy and about Elsie. She pretends to listen to my answers, but she’s not like Eric who listens to me in a way that makes me believe he cares. Eric lets me have my own opinions and doesn’t force his on me. Ms. Crawl, on the other hand, is the kind of woman who has an agenda. I am one-dimensional to her. I am a pregnant teenager.

In the middle of the meeting, she gets up to close the door, her shoes squeaking like sick mice. “You seem like a very smart girl, Snow. I feel as if I can be straight with you.” She sits on the edge of her desk, so that I’m staring up into her nostrils. Her pointy tits
poke through her camisole and her satiny blouse. I find this deeply disturbing because for some reason she strikes me as a woman who shouldn’t have nipples. “We sometimes encourage girls in your circumstance to consider adoption. There are so many kind, loving adults who’d like to offer a baby, like yours, a home.”

“Like mine?” I say, confused.

Ms. Crawl clears her throat. She reaches out a scrawny hand and smooths invisible creases on her skirt.

“Do you know what it’s like to be given away?” I ask her. “You know what happens to those people? They become fuck-ups, like me. That’s what happens.”

“You know what happens to babies born to fifteen-year-old girls?” she asks me. “They become fifteen-year-old girls with babies.” She holds out her hand, presenting me as her evidence. Resting her case.

I shake my head, disagreeing.

“How old was your mother?” she asks, going for blood. Sky was right.

“So what?” I say, disappointed in myself because that was the best I could come up with. And, really, I don’t need to speak. There’s comfort in being a statistic. To know there’s lots of us out there. At least we have those high-risk factors to defend our actions. I don’t even need to explain myself to Ms. Crawl. She knew me the moment she opened my file. I suppose all families have their heirlooms: fine china, portrait paintings, teenage pregnancies.

Ms. Crawl stares straight at me, prepared for this. “I didn’t create this society, Snow. And believe me, if I could change it, I would. I devote my life to helping girls like you. But the reality is, teenage mothers just aren’t given a lot of breaks. You get money from the government, but it sure isn’t much, and there are a lot of
wonderful women out there who would provide great opportunities your child will never see. It’s a harsh reality, but you need to think of someone other than yourself now.” She gestures to my stomach, as if I didn’t know what she was talking about.

She gives me pamphlets and makes me sit through a fifteen-minute video on adoption. When she flicks on the light and opens the door to release me, I ask if there are any videos on keeping your baby. “Of course. You’ll be participating in many groups on mothering. And ultimately, Snow, it’s entirely your choice and we’ll support you either way. I promise you that. You just need to be aware of the consequences. Sometimes that can get lost in here.”

People are afraid I won’t know how to love you. They don’t say it exactly, but it’s in the worried way they look at me. At school they give me books and articles and assignments on how to love my child. As if the way I love is wrong. But I never knew there was a right way. I bet most people don’t. I bet there are people all over the place, loving the wrong kind of way, but I don’t see any fingers pointing at them, say, in the middle of a crowded subway, to the father in the blue suit with a bruised right fist:
You, yes, you—the way you love is wrong
.

“You already are a mother. You’re loving already. Think of what you’re creating. That’s the best kind of love,” says Eric, thinking he’s comforting me. But inside my body I love you perfectly only because I have no say in it. Under my silent direction, you will come out flawless. But it’s when you are in my hands and you are crying and I don’t know what to do that I worry about. How will I love you then?

How do you describe love, good love, to someone who has never known it? It’s like describing snow to someone who’s never
seen it. How can you describe something that’s beautiful and ugly all at once? Something you can both appreciate and resent. Something that’s cold but can feel so warm. How do you describe that love’s all about balance? Too little and it will melt away, too much and it will break you. Now, how do you describe all this if you yourself have never seen snow?

“You don’t describe love,” says Eric. “You give it.”