Blasted (18 page)

About two months after Patrick stopped seeing me, I finally had to admit to the signs. Somewhere at the back of my mind I'd nurtured a convenient fantasy that I couldn't get pregnant because he was Catholic; it would have been cross-species pollination. But I stopped getting my period, I grew two sore little breasts and started puking, and finally even I had to admit that Catholic sperm had less prejudice than I did. Juanita and I had many hysterical whispered conversations in the old tub next door: there was no place to get an abortion in Newfoundland; Sally had gone to Montreal; it cost four hundred dollars, plus the plane fare; I was underage and would have to tell my grandparents –! O-mi-god, o-mi-god, o-mi-god –!

Juanita's uncle was sending her off to Toronto for a week to visit an older cousin (she was considered cool, and was supposed to provide an appropriate role model for Juanita), and for a while we discussed elaborate schemes wherein we would fool both of our families and somehow substitute me for her on the plane at the last instant. But in the end she went, both of us choking and wailing, our faces blotched and puffy. Her aunt had kindly brought me along to the airport to say goodbye, but after our clinging embraces, sobs and whispers, she decided we were lesbian lovers and drove me back to the Southside in tight-lipped silence. The week Juanita was gone I wandered around in a daze, getting into even more trouble than usual. What would happen when I got too big to conceal it? There'd been a girl in our school who'd actually managed to conceal her pregnancy from her parents right up until she went into labour and gave birth in the basement, her father slapping her about the head all the while and calling her a “whore.” I wondered if my grandparents would call me a whore. Would they kick me out; would they let me keep the baby in the house? Where would it sleep? I wasn't sure I wanted a baby. In fact, I was sure I didn't. I wondered about giving it up for adoption; at that thought something tore inside me.

When Juanita got back, she snuck over to my house (her aunt had banned her from ever seeing me again); she was wearing new clothes from the mythic Eaton's Centre, and had streaked and straightened hair, two mysterious brown paper bags, and a strange smile on her face.

“My uncle's cousin,” she whispered to me in my bedroom, “is into this weird Wicca stuff. Crystals everywhere and herbs.”

“Oh, God, I want to
die.
”

“And she has these books on herbal remedies. And I looked stuff up. This,” she waved one brown paper bag at me, “is blue cohosh. And this,” the other bag, “is pennyroyal.” I snatched them from her and looked inside; dead, dried leaves. I glared at her through my tears. “This stuff works!” she said. “You make an infusion…”

“A what?”

“An infusion…”

“Sure, you don't know what that is any more than I do!”

But somehow she convinced me to try. She made a tea with a handful of the herbs in a big mason jar, and I drank the nasty stuff down.

Juanita told me to drink three cups of the stuff a day, for six days. I decided that an entire mason jar five times a day would be better, until I'd used all of the herbs she'd brought.

Nothing happened.

The morning after my final jar of the stuff, my uterus seized up in the middle of math class. I gasped. It unclenched a little, then seized again. It felt like menstrual cramps, only a lot worse, and I stuck up my hand and asked the teacher if I could go to the bathroom. She refused, saying I was only trying to sneak out for a smoke. I stuck my hand way high into the air and screamed, “Jesus-Miss-if-you-don't-let-me-go-
right-now
-I'll-pissme-pants!” The whole class laughed uproariously and she tossed me out in disgust.

In the washroom I realized that I was bleeding. A lot. I dug a tampon out of my bag, and then ran down the hall to the Advanced Math class, where Juanita was tossing off quadratic equations. I knocked on the door and asked the teacher if I could speak with Juanita; it was an emergency, I said, and one look at my face convinced the man to let me take my friend out of class. “Be back in five,” he warned.

Out in the hall Juanita and I looked at each other. “Bleeding,” I said.

“How much?”

“A lot.”

We took off for the Southside, a walk of about a mile and a half. By the time we got there my sweater was tied around my waist to conceal the blood oozing through my jeans. We snuck around the back and crept into the abandoned house. I stripped from the waist down and climbed into the old tub.

“What do we do now?” I hissed, crouching, trying not to cry. “Ow!”

“It's working!” I couldn't tell if she was terrified or pleased.

“What happens next?” I got out through another wave of pain.

“The blue co… blue c-co-hosh stimulates labour…”

“You're telling
me
…”

And the pennyroyal expels the, the, the fetus.”

“Oh, God.” I pulled on the tampon string; it slid out in a bloody rush, followed by more thick blood. “Oh, Jesus!”

Clots started coming out of me, more and more clots. The pain came in waves. Blood pooled in the bottom of the tub, seeped out of the useless drain, spread on the floor. The contractions came closer together, the waves of pain steeper now, I climbed up the pain like a mountain.

Something inside me was tearing, my heart, my womb; gouts of blood and a mass gushed out of me, noises squeezed out of my throat, from my belly. “Get it, that's the baby, oh sweet Jesus get it!” I begged Juanita. She grabbed a dusty jam jar from a corner and scooped the clots into it, blood on her hands. She was holding my head, shouting something at me. She slapped my face, slapped it again. I was on my back, practically slid into the tub now, all of me pouring out, blood covering my legs, my hands, in my hair. The smell of it rich in my nostrils. She put the jar into my hands, it was hot, and she was gone.

She went to my grandparents' house, I found out later, and called an ambulance. The next thing I knew men were over me, trying to get me up, taking the jar away from me. “That's the baby,” I screamed, “I need it, that's my baby!” Juanita was shrieking at them like a banshee and a gory tug-of-war ensued – she tried to wrest the jar from one of the paramedics, and he kept yelling it was “evidence.” They'd broken in the front door but hadn't been able to get the stretcher up the narrow staircase, so they carried me down to the front hall and strapped me in there. Juanita was screaming and crying, sobbing and sobbing.

My grandparents never really recovered from that little incident. It aged them visibly. I don't know if each thought the other was having a talk with me about the whole thing; in any case, neither ever did. They had a talk with Juanita's aunt, however, who had a talk with them, and the only thing Gramma ever said to me was, “Well. That Mrs. Holmes is a piece of work. Seems you've been a bad influence on Juanita all this time. You, bad for her! Who just about killed you, I'd like to know?” We weren't allowed to see each other for a month, and then only when certain “conditions” were imposed: we were supervised, met only in daylight, and couldn't talk on the phone.

I didn't go back to school for two weeks, and when I did, everyone knew. So-and-so's mother worked in the hospital cafeteria, and so-and-so's father was a nurse there, and by the time I got out (six days they kept me)
everyone
knew.

I arrived early at “The Jolly Friggin Roger,” even though I'd dawdled on the walk over. It was all decked out in plastic crabs and old fishing nets, ships' wheels and fake swords on the walls. I got a booth, read the menu a million times, ordered a beer and drank it, went to the bathroom, read the menu again. When at last Juanita appeared, she was wearing red heels and a tight black dress that showed off her curves, her hair whipped up into a dark froth on top of her head. She grinned when she saw me and clacked over to the booth, flinging herself into the seat opposite me. “Babysitter didn't arrive on time,” she announced. She took a long last drag on a smoke and stubbed the butt out in a saucer.

“You'd be late anyway, sure,” I said. “You're always late. Don't try to pass this off on some blameless babysitter.”

“I'm not always late,” she said. “I'm busy.”

A young waitress appeared at our table. Her eyes fell on the ruined cigarette stub. “I'm sorry, you can't smoke in here,” she squeaked.

“Sure, love,” Juanita said. Her eyes fell on my empty beer bottle. “We'll have a pitcher of the lager to start, and let's look at those menus.”

“
I
already know what I want,” I said, “having spent the last half-hour with nothing to do but read the menu. I'll have the mussels.”

“And I'll have the steak,” Juanita said, snapping her menu closed.

The waitress retreated. Juanita leaned into me. “You scurvy dog!”

“What? I'm not a scurvy dog,” I said, feeling offended.

“No, but I've always wanted to call someone a scurvy dog.”

“Is that why you made me come meet you at this horrible place?” I asked. “So you could pretend to be a pirate and terrorize me?”

“Naw. Dennis is into pirates; we come here all the time. I thought you'd like it because the pitchers are
cheap
. But I don't get to drink when I'm out with him.”

There was a complication in her voice, something like sadness and contentment mingled, and when the waitress scurried up with our pitcher I filled a glass and shoved it toward her. She downed it, to my relief, and our date could begin. The restaurant filled up fast. We ate bread sticks, drank copious quantities of beer (the pitchers were indeed cheap) and gradually she relaxed into something like the Juanita I remembered. She'd gotten some fake copper streaks in her hair, and I told her she looked like a cougar-in-training. She waved her hand in an expansive gesture. “It's a maturity thing. You wouldn't understand.”

“I'd call you a cunt, but you lack the warmth
and
the depth.”

She ignored me. “Man, you drink fast; you're beating me two to one. And we're out of bread.” She picked up the basket and waved it at the waitress. I hissed at her.

“What? What did I do?”

“Listen, girl, I'm a waitress, and I'll tell you…”

“Oh, you're still waitressing?”

“Whaddayamean?”

“I just wondered if you were still at it.”

“You, the per-fessional nurse, means, is Ruby still some loser waiting tables.”

“No, no,
no.
”

“Well, I am, okay? And, and, I make good money, and meet all sorts of interesting people, okay?”

“Like, what sort of interesting people?” Her eyes glittered. “Like, interesting
men
?”

“God, you're insatiable.”

“I'm just asking.” She poured herself another glass, emptying our fourth pitcher. “Just give me a reason to hope, okay? Dating men in this town is like picking through garbage.”

I looked out the window, taking another swig of beer. Then I turned back with an attempt at a brilliant smile. “Yes. I meet the most fascinating, handsome, rich, caring men you could ever hope to find.”

“But they're all gay?”

“
Actually
, little grasshopper, I met the fella I'm seeing now because of my job.”

“You're seeing someone?” She sat up straight. “What's he like?”

I thought of Clyde. “Tall. Blonde.”

Juanita's eyes were round and shining, and her lips were parted. “Are you serious? What colour are his eyes?”

“Brown.”

She groaned and fell back in the booth. “Blonde with brown eyes! I love that! Is he, you know…”

“Like a horse.”

“I don't believe you. You're killing me. Stop!” She fanned herself with a napkin. “Tall, blonde, rich…”

“He's not rich,” I corrected. “And it's not like we're getting married or anything. It's sort of casual…”

“God forbid Ruby Jones get
married.
You know, Ruby, you've got to get over this thing you have.”

“What thing?”

“Your anti-marriage thing.”

“I do not have an
anti-marriage
thing.”

“No, you just can't stay with anyone for more than five minutes…”

“…you're one to talk.”

“Hey, I've had relationships that lasted, like,
years
, even.”

“I don't think Clyde's the one,” I said.

“Then who the fuck is? You know your problem? You're scared, you just don't trust men.
Any
man.”

“No. My problem is I only go out with men I don't trust.”

“Same thing.”

“Is not.”

“Is.”

“Is not.”

“Well, get over it and snag this guy, is what I say.”

My voice rose. “Juanita, it's not like that.”

“Okay, okay,” she soothed.

“And Clyde's not all that great, alright?”

“Sure, sure.”

“Actually, he's kind of a total jerk…”

“It's okay, Ruby.” The waitress showed up with another basket of bread, and Juanita ordered a fifth pitcher.

We sat silent for a while, me staring angrily out the window. I felt her eyes upon me; she was looking at me with this soulful, compassionate expression. “Will you quit it?”

“Sure. Anything you want.”

Her voice was complicated again – maternal, that's what it was. I let a silence grow between us and then burst out, “Look. There's just something
creepy
about getting hitched up. You just
know
he'll switch on you. He'll switch right around on you and get all weird and go off without telling you, and, and, and that's all there is to it,” I ended. Juanita had the grace to stay quiet. She excused herself to go outside for a butt, and when she came back the new pitcher had arrived and I was determined to talk about something she'd like. I filled our glasses and asked, “How's Dennis?”