As She Grows (7 page)

I go to Mark’s house after swimming class. My hair is still wet, leaving a big round mark on his pillow. He licks my stomach and says I taste like chlorine. Then he tickles his tongue down my thigh till I can’t take it any longer and I clamp my knees together to trap his head and stop him.

It is strange the places on a body that summon you. Mark has six scars: two on his hands, one on his forearm, one on his leg, one on his face, and the one we don’t talk about, on his left wrist. I am drawn to these silent marks, rough edges of once-perforated skin, indications that there
is
a way inside. Evidence that there is something beneath Mark’s surface.

I reach down, his head still at my knees, and brush the scar streaked across his cheek like a generous paint stroke. “Tell me about this one again,” I say.

“You’re crazy,” he whispers, smiling.

“I like to hear it,” I whine, until he brings his head up to my bare chest and tells me how he got into a fight when he caught some skinheads trying to beat up his little brother in a park. How after he pulled the pimply faced guy off his bloodied brother, a bunch of fourteen-year-old kids jumped Mark. How one smashed a beer bottle on the sidewalk and then sliced Mark’s face. I think of new questions to ask each time he tells me:
Was it a cloudy day? What
did you eat before that? Were you wearing running shoes?

He laughs at my strange questions, but I persist. Then I listen to his answers, envious of the privileged facts. I need to know this, this detail; I need to know what it takes to break skin.

Mark holds up my hand above us and plays with my fingers. “So small,” he says, “like a chicken bone. I could just snap it.” Then he softly kisses the tip of each finger and I am suddenly compelled to mean more.

“Did you talk to your father?” I ask, knowing he was supposed to receive the collect phone call from jail today. He’s in for assault with a weapon, for beating some guy up at a bar who took his beer.

“Yep,” he says, holding my hand up to his, comparing size.

“And?”

“Was nothing.” He puts down my hand and reaches over to the night table, grabs a spliff, and lights it. “Wants me to get some papers or something for him.” He takes a deep drag and then extends it out for me.

“Will you?”

“Are you fuckin’ kidding?” And that’s the end of the conversation. Mark hates his father. Not the way I hate Elsie, but a complete flat-out hate that offers no tiny folds of forgiveness. He lays his head against my chest and I play with his hair, imagine I am touching moths’ wings, hoping some of him will flake off and I’ll ground him.

I’m in a kitchen, though it’s not really a kitchen, it’s more like all rooms in one. There’s a bed in the corner and a couch by the fridge. Mustard wallpaper lines the walls and in the centre of the room is a fake-wood table with chrome legs. It stinks like the public washrooms in parks or hockey arenas. There’s a dark-green shag carpet, and if you look close enough, you can see things like cigarette butts and pieces of food like chunks of dandruff in thick hair. I cling to Elsie’s arm, my back pressed against her leg, averting my eyes from the woman in front of me who Elsie says is her sister.

“Come sit over here.” The woman pushes out the chair beside her so hard it topples over and almost hits my leg. She scares me with her scratchy voice and her yellowed fingers. I freeze and look to Elsie’s unresponsive face for permission. But then the woman starts to laugh like it’s all so funny. “What’d you do to her? She’s scared as a mouse!” She then turns to me.“That’s all right, just a chair, won’t bite you.” In the absence of Elsie’s objection, I move closer to the chair.

“Caw, caw!!” The woman sticks out her fingers like claws and startles me backward. She is laughing hysterically, her wide teeth like rotting corn.

“You’re scaring her!”

“Oh, don’t be an idiot,” the woman spits at Elsie. “I’m fuckin’ family.” She holds a cigarette in her mouth and motions to the chair again. I cautiously walk toward her as she speaks through me to Elsie. “She’s got my eyes,” she says, her hot breath on me. Just as I’m about to sit, she starts to cough and splutter.

“You stink,” I say, surprising myself, “like garbage.”

And the woman stares at me, mouth opened wide, with no air coming out until I think she’s dying, but then I realize she’s actually laughing. “She’s just like her mother,” she finally breathes out and laughs hysterically.

“That’s enough. I don’t know what I was thinking. We’re going.” Elsie pulls my hand so hard I start to cry.

“What’s wrong with that woman?” I asked in a dark and smelly hallway.

“She’s dying.” Then Elsie bends down to me and firmly presses her hands on my cheeks. She squeezes so tight my teeth hurt. “Don’t worry—to us, she’s already dead.”

I wake in Mark’s room with a pain in my gut. I have to pee. When I climb back into bed, I’m careful not to disturb Mark’s sleeping body. He groans and rolls over, wraps his arm around me. I lie there, wide awake, staring at his arm draped over me like a limp fish. I want to turn and press my body into his, but I don’t. Instead, I just lie there cursing myself for not being able to just do the things I feel.
A restless sleep is a restless mind,
Elsie used to taunt, often finding me reading in my bed at four a.m. And I’d
glance back at her drowsy form standing in the doorway, her paleblue cotton nightie clinging to her large, tired breasts, never bothering to ask her in return why she was awake.

Since it’s our last Saturday night together, Carla and I decide to celebrate. She arrives at my apartment, throws her bag on the kitchen table, and pulls out two plastic Baggies with the shrivelled brown mushrooms her brother carefully weighed for each of us.

“It’s not very much,” I say, disappointed, holding the bag up in the air and moving my eyes in for a closer inspection.

“Believe me,” Carla affirms, as if she knows what she’s talking about. “It’s enough.”

We boil the water for the Lipton Cup-a-Soup and then fill our mugs. Carla carefully drops in the hardened dried-up pieces, crushing them between her fingers like spices. She concentrates hard, tongue slightly out, as if she were a scientist working with dangerous chemicals.

“Cheers,” we say, clanging our mugs together, eager to start slurping disorder into our minds. “Here’s to our friendship!”

We drink the watery soup, stopping every once in a while to chew the mushroom bits. When we are done, we slam our mugs down on the table and stare at each other. I can hardly hold back the excitement. But nothing happens. We wait another half hour and, still, nothing happens.

“We got ripped off,” I announce angrily, pulling back my chair.

“No we didn’t,” Carla says. “My own fuckin’ brother wouldn’t rip me off.”

“Whatever,” I say, thoroughly pissed. “What a waste of cash.”

We move into the living room and turn on the TV. We are not talking to each other. Every once in a while I mutter how much of a waste this was and Carla tells me to shut up. But then, after about two hours, I’m watching the TV and I see people’s faces start drooping and bulging, and rainbows trail behind their moving bodies like rustling flags.

I look over to Carla, who is staring glaze-faced at the television. “You see that?” I ask, and though she doesn’t respond, I think she must, because she starts laughing uncontrollably.

Time becomes liquid. I pick up my mug and stare down a hole a thousand feet deep. I want more. My upper lip detaches from my mouth, creeping over the rim like a wet slug. I watch it inch slowly to the bottom of the mug, sucking the last drops of cold liquid with its pulsating mouth. Butterfly wings miraculously sprout from its side and then my winged lip floats out into the room, my hands wildly trying to capture it in flight. I call for Carla to help, but she just sits there, laughing and pointing at my nose, trying to say something that only comes out as incomprehensible giggles. We move out to the apartment courtyard, where wet grass licks our bare feet with a thousand hungry tongues. Our sore stomachs ache from laughter as we take turns watching light drip like honey through a plastic water bottle balanced on our foreheads.

When things become ugly and real once more, we lie in the dark, back on the couch, eating chips and watching MuchMusic. I am in a bad mood, disappointed I can’t stay in that magic world, pissed at Carla for not bringing more. I scan the room with disappointed eyes, no longer able to see the beauty in the ugliness around me. And then the phone rings. It’s Mark. He’s mad that I did ’shrooms, tells me he doesn’t want me getting into that stuff. I tell him it was just this once and then I lie and say it was awful.

“It’s that Carla bitch,” he says. “She drags you into this crap.”

“Shut up!” I want to say more, but I can’t, because Carla is staring at me as I talk. “I can make my own decisions.”

For some reason, Mark backs down. He tells me to come over, he wants to see me. When I tell him I’m staying with Carla, he gets all sweet and starts saying how much he misses me in his bed. His voice sounds so good, I consider going but I look to Carla, who knows what’s going on, and she shoots me an evil look. She gestures for me to hang up.

“I can’t come,” I say firmly. But then Marks gets all mad, telling me I can’t always be the one who gets to choose when I come over. That sometimes he should get a choice. He tells me Carla is jealous that I have a boyfriend and that I shouldn’t let her tell me what to do. He keeps going on about it, getting more and more mad, until finally I tell him I’ll be over in an hour and hang up the phone.

“It’s just easier if I go,” I explain to Carla, who’s rolling her eyes and shaking her head at me. “You can stay in my room. Elsie won’t care.”

“As if,” she says angrily. “Why’s he such an asshole?”

“You don’t know him,” I say defensively. “He’s not like that.” And I can’t explain because no one understands him the way I do.

Mark treats everyone like shit and people can’t understand how we’ve lasted so long. No one crosses Mark because they know he doesn’t care, doesn’t care whether you’re a friend or a stranger; he’ll turn on you over a stolen cigarette. But I know he would never hurt me, he tells me himself how he wouldn’t, ever. It’s like I’m this little egg Mark can’t bring himself to crush. Still, I’ll pester him over something stupid like him not phoning me. I’ll keep going on and on, calling him an asshole and prick, not letting it drop. Till I know I’m just testing him. Till his fist comes out in front of my face and he’s got spit on the corners
of his mouth and the veins on the side of his forehead are popping. And even though I know he’d never do it, there’s that second of silence when I close my eyes and brace.

And I know what people would say to that, which is why I never mention it to Carla or anyone, because no one understands Mark the way I do. No one gets that he’s trying with me, really trying to be a good person. And although people might think it, no one would admit that there’s something admirable about a crazy dog who obeys the mere snap of his master’s fingers, or a child who will stop frantically crying only in her mother’s arms. No one would admit a certain jealousy for such selective loyalty.