Look at You Now (14 page)

“Was your mom okay?”

“Yeah, she broke a rib I think. She had bruises everywhere. The next day my grandfather came back over with a horse truck, walked Scooter up onto the ramp, didn't say anything to any of us, and we never saw Scooter again.”

Tilly was looking at me in awe. Nellie peeked her head in the laundry room with a mouth full of food.

“What's going on?” Nellie asked. “What are you doing? Is Liz telling a story?”

Tilly turned to her. “You missed it.”

“Fuck, was it a good one?”

“It was the best one I've heard.”

“Fuck you both. You're telling me that fucking story later, you hear me, Liz?” Nellie left, and we switched the clothes from the washers to the dryers. Tilly and I headed to the nearly empty cafeteria. Dinner was almost over. Tilly grabbed a disgusting-looking sandwich, and then the woman behind the counter loaded her up with something that resembled macaroni and cheese with brown chunks in it. I took milk and spread peanut butter onto a piece of stale white bread—it was still the only thing I could stand. We sat at the end of one of the tables while the cafeteria lady swept the floor around us.

“Your life sounds exciting,” Tilly said. The yellow mac and cheese thing smelled so bad I couldn't eat my peanut butter.

“It's not exciting. Maybe compared to here, but it's just normal.”

“Come on, it's not fucking normal. Horses, ponds, tree swings. Get real, Liz. That's not normal.”

“Well, I'll tell you what's not normal, Till, is the fucking food here.”

“What, this? You never had mac and cheese with chunks of cat food in it?”

“
Tilly
, so gross, oh my God.”

“Well
they
call it mac and cheese with tuna. We call it 9Lives mac-shit. You get used to it. Here, try a bite.” She waved the chunk of cat food on her fork in my face and laughed at my reaction.

“What, it doesn't smell great to you? You just have to try it, Liz.”

She got up and started chasing me around the room with the fork of smelly food. I ducked under a table. We were laughing our asses off. The cafeteria lady told us to be quiet and leave. Tilly stopped, put her hand on her hip, and said, “Simmer yourself, Jeanette . . . we're just havin' a laugh.” Jeanette tried to shoo us out with the broom. “Just trying to get her to take a bite of your famous 9Lives mac and cheese,” Tilly said.

Jeanette fired back,“That is some grade A tuna in there, young lady.”

“Oh yeah, grade A? Did you hear that, Liz?” We ran out, still laughing. I started to head for the stairs. Tilly pulled on my sweater. “Did you forget something?”

“What?”

“First
fucking
rule of laundry—don't forget it!”

We went back to the laundry room and pulled the warm clothes out of the dryer. Tilly grabbed a shirt, made sure I was watching, and then laid it on the table and carefully flattened out the wrinkles with her forearm. Then, like a hotel chambermaid, she folded the sleeves in just so, folded the shirt in half, and then in half again. She did that several times at the speed of light, and in seconds all my clothes were folded. She placed them back in the clean pillowcase, handed it to me, and bowed.

“Impressive. Thanks, Till.”

“My cousin used to work in a laundromat so it's one thing I know how to do. Problem is, I don't have enough clothes to have to do it for myself.” She laughed. I thought about her one shirt, and laughed. Next thing I knew, we were stopped in the hall, doubled
over laughing. It was like when my sisters and I would start giggling in church and couldn't stop. It went on for several minutes. I tried to get ahold of myself, but it was no use—we were having a full-on laughing attack. Every time we looked at each other we busted up. I finally made it back to my room, panting and exhausted. In all our laughing, for the first time in weeks, I'd forgotten about the bad stuff. I felt something I recognized from before—joy. And I wanted to hang on to it. I wanted to remember it, to hold it, to make sure it was real. But I just sat there for a moment, and felt it. Tilly had sparked something inside me. For the very first time, I began to believe that I might be okay at the end of all this.

I watched the snow pouring down outside the window and noticed the outline of the circle I'd made earlier on the glass. I drew with my finger two eyes and a slight smiling mouth. And then I felt something weird going on in my stomach—not a pain, but a nudge. I lifted up my sweater, looked down at my big belly, and noticed something pushing from the inside. My stomach stuck out in one little spot. I softly held my finger against the nudge. It went away and then it came back. I pushed it again, and it pushed back. There was a baby in there, moving around. And for the first time I realized, I really didn't want it to die.

chapter
8

A
few days later, the girls were sleeping, but I was awake. It was late at night. I sat alone in the quiet phone booth. It felt like years of life had passed since I'd spoken to Daniel. There was screaming and music blaring through the other end of the phone. The music got louder as I waited for Daniel to come to the phone.

“Liz?” he said. “Hey, how you doing? How is it?” My throat tightened. Maybe it was the phone booth—the place I'd cried so many times before—or maybe it was the sound of real life happening far away, without me. I ignored the tears as they rolled down my cheeks.

“It's okay,” I said.

“I can barely hear you.”

“It's okay.” I raised my voice.

“Where
is
the place?”

“I'm in Indiana somewhere.”

“Shit, hang on.” There were voices, and then I heard Daniel laugh. “Sorry, sorry, they're having this stupid party thing on the
hall. Remember my friend Aaron? He's such a bonehead. He filled these trash cans with grain alcohol and Hawaiian Punch. Everyone is wasted.”

The lightbulb was flickering on the ceiling of the phone booth. “Oh yeah, I remember him.”

“Sorry. So what's it like? You okay? Shit, hang on, yeah I know, shithead. Wait, Liz, what did you say?”

“Nothing. You sound busy, Daniel. . . .”

“No, no, it's fine. We just finished midterms so everyone's crazy.”

“I guess I just wanted to say hi.” There was an awkward silence. I felt how starkly our lives had diverged.

“
Coming, man
. Sorry, I guess I should maybe call you tomorrow or something. I'm on the hall phone here, ya know?”

“It's okay, I get it.”

“I'm sorry about all this, Liz.”

“It's fine, I'll talk to you later.”

I hung up the phone and looked down at the names and initials scratched into the wooden counter where the phone sat and wondered about all the girls who had come and gone.

I'd stopped counting exactly how many mornings had passed. Since I didn't know exactly when I was leaving, it was pointless. I rarely knew what day it was, because it didn't matter anymore. I had nowhere to go. I'd come to accept that this was my life, for now. It felt like the longest point A to point B I'd ever have to experience. There were a few unavoidable realities: I was going nowhere until the baby came. I would never feel like the person I used to be. And perhaps I
would
survive. I was beginning to understand that the experience of the facility would be a part of me forever. But my forever still felt like a pretty good thing. I had a lot waiting for me, and even more to look forward to. Most of the girls had no idea what their forever was even kind of going to look like. Many had to go back to juvie without their babies, a few had nowhere to go, and most of them didn't have people in their lives
like I had—people who could help remind them that everything would eventually be okay.

• • • •

My strange bulging body had gotten all tangled in my big T-shirt during the night. I kept my eyes shut as I struggled out of it and made my way to the dresser. I ignored the person in the bathroom mirror with the swollen boobs and sullen face. The lounge was dark and empty when I came through. The girls must have all gone to breakfast. The TV was blaring in the empty room. I walked over and flipped it off.

“Hey,” a voice said. I turned around. Wren was sitting in the corner by the window.

“Oh, sorry, I didn't see you.”

“It's fine, leave it off.”

“You all right?”

“I don't feel so good,” she said, making a face. Just then, weeble-wobble Alice hurried through the door with her loud ring of keys, carrying a big pile of newspapers and paper towels.

“Well, well, well. The two girls who shouldn't miss breakfast the most are sitting here in the dark. Perfect, juuuuust perfect.” She turned on the bright lights, grabbed a chair, and moved it near the chore board. “I'm assigning new chores, and I mean it that you girls gotta do them before school. No one listens to me around here.”

“Wren doesn't feel well,” I said to Alice.

“Come here, Wren,” Alice said. “Am I so bad you can't talk to me yourself?”

“. . . Kind of,” Wren said. I admired Wren's honesty. She, like most of the girls, said exactly what she thought. There was no guessing with them.

“Come on, that's not true. You can always come to me. What's the problem?”

“I'm bleeding.”

“Bleeding bleeding?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, no problem. Liz, walk her down to the nurse for me, okay? And grab some food on your way. You girls have no idea how much better you'd feel if you ate your gosh-darned meals every day.”

Wren and I headed out down to the basement. The nurse with the beehive told us to wait in the exam room for the doctor. It was the creepy room, with no windows. Wren's scar looked more purple against her pale face in the strangely dark room. She ran her finger over the scar. I tried not to notice, but she looked at me.

“You want to know how it happened?”

“Okay.” I really did, actually.

“My mom fell asleep at the wheel, but I didn't die like some other people.”

“Does it hurt?”

“No, it used to, it's just numb now. You ever been in a car accident?”

I flashed back in my mind.

I was about five years old and our whole family was getting ready to go ice-skating. My mom was flying around the house, trying to gather hats and coats and mittens, frantically piling ice skates at the front door. We kids walked circles around each other, searching for our things. Her friend was about to arrive in the big VW van with her own six kids to pick all of us up. We heard the loud familiar honk blasting from outside. Dorothy was crazed with so many of us—throwing coats, tying boots, wrapping scarves around necks, pushing us one after another out the door. I was the last one. She pulled me back by the hood of my puffy snowsuit and turned me around. In three seconds flat she tied the hood under my chin so hard I almost choked.

“Mom . . . ouch!”

“There,” she said. “And keep it tied, a warm head makes a warm child.” I waddled down the steps in my snowsuit and red snow boots and climbed into the van behind all the other kids. There
were no seats left, so I sat on the floor with a few of the others. We were off, the van speeding down the street. The kids were bickering and pushing in the back—there were so many of us. I sat on the floor and tried to pull my too-tight hood off. Suddenly, we took a sharp right turn. A few kids fell off their seats, and out of nowhere the van door flew all the way open. I could see the street and houses outside buzzing by and then, like a Lincoln Log, I rolled out of the van and onto the street. Lying on my side, very still, all I could see were two headlights moving toward me. I closed my eyes so I didn't have to watch if I got squashed. But I guess the car stopped in time.

“Lizzie? Lizzie, can you hear me?” I opened my eyes and saw my mom kneeling over me on the road. She had a rare look of panic on her face.

“I think so,” I said.

“Thank Goooooodddddd.” Dorothy scooped me up and carried me with both arms out in front of her, like a sacrificial offering. She marched up to the nearest house, banged on the door with her boot, and asked the woman if we could come inside. She sat me down and checked my legs and arms and neck and back and feet, and then she looked at my face. I was holding my cheek in my hand. She untied the hood, pulled my hand off my cheek, and found a big scrape on the side of my face. She turned to the lady whose house we were in.

“May we please borrow a stick of butter?”

She unwrapped one end and then held it like a big fat crayon and began coloring my cheek with it.

“There,” she said. “You're going to be just fine. You could have cracked your head open, Liz. Your snowsuit saved your life; thank you for keeping your hood on.”

• • • •

I looked at Wren and the long scar on her face.

“I fell out of a car once. I mean, I guess that's an accident in a car. I rolled out of a van.”

“You get hurt?”

“Not really.”

“When I'm older I can have an operation to make this scar not so bad.”

“I don't think it's too bad.”

The doctor finally walked in. Wren grabbed my hand. I could tell she was scared.

“Which one of you is bleeding?” Wren raised her hand. He pointed to me and told me to wait outside. A few minutes later, Wren came out almost smiling.

“It's fine,” she said. “It's normal, he said sometimes people have see-through, or breakthrough, something bleeding. . . .”

“So he didn't have to do anything?”

“Nope.”

Thank God. One less thing to worry about.

• • • •

Later that morning Tilly asked me, “What happened to Wren?” She was sitting in her usual spot, in the lounge.

“She's fine, she had some bleeding. Dr. Dick said it's normal.”

Alice was marching around the room, trying to get the girls to do chores. Nellie put her hands on her hips in defiance.

“Alice, I ain't fuckin' changing lightbulbs. Go ask the doctor, see what he'd say, I'm not gettin' on no ladder.”

“It's a step stool, Nellie, and watch your attitude.” I was still floored at the way the girls spoke to the adults. Alice continued, “Now, all you guys, get on outta here and go to school. None of you keeps track of the time. You're like babies yourselves.”

• • • •

It was still cold, and snow still covered the grounds. Going up to school felt like entering a time-passing torture chamber. Maryann sat reading by herself, and most of the girls were nodding off as usual. Tilly handed me a piece of paper.

“Let's do that thing we did the other day, Liz. You put the letters in.” She was talking about word searches; I'd made a few for the girls, just like the ones in the books my mom brought for us on long car rides. The waiting reminded me of how I'd hated waiting for anything else in life, times a thousand. After more doing nothing, three hours later, we were heading back down the hill. Tilly and I held Nellie's arms to make sure she didn't fall and roll down the hill. When we were back inside the facility building, Nellie hollered, as usual, “Yo, CHIEF, whattttt isssss up?”

Chief turned to us and flashed a big smile. “Well look who it is, the three pregnant stooges. Liz, you got a very white-lookin' visitor in Ms. Graham's office.”

“Is her mom here?” Tilly asked.

“It's either her mom or the goddamn queen of England.” My stomach dropped from excitement. I'd almost forgotten. The door to Ms. Graham's office opened.

“I want to meet her first,” Nellie said.

“Fuck that, I'm meeting her first,” Tilly said.

“Girls, language,
please
, you can both meet her.” Ms. Graham stepped out in the hall, then my mom stepped out behind her. She had on her long red Ralph Lauren wool coat with the black velvet collar and a studded brooch pinned to the lapel. Her black patent leather boots shined under the fluorescent lights. She
did
look like a queen. She looked at me and smiled. I walked over and hugged her; she squeezed me hard.

“Hi, Liz,” she said. I couldn't believe she was really here.

“Hi, Mom.” She held my face with both hands and then hugged me again. Her eyes moved to Tilly, and then to Nellie. I turned to follow her gaze, and suddenly it was like I was seeing them for the first time too. I saw Nellie's boils again, the way they covered her whole face. Part of Tilly's naked belly was sticking out the bottom of her shirt, her big floppy shoes were untied, and you could barely see her eyes through her long, stringy bangs. Dorothy looked back at me; I smiled.

“Mom, I want you to meet these guys. This is Tilly, and this is Nellie.”

Dorothy tried to hide her shock. I could tell what she was thinking. She took a deep breath and responded, long and slow, “Well, hellooo girls, it is veeeeerrrry nice to meet both of you.”

“Holy shit, you look just like Liz but older, how you doin'?” Nellie blurted out.

“I'm verrrry wellll, thank you, and you?”

“Me? I guess I'm okay except for this big-ass stomach of mine.” Nellie patted the top of her stomach, and then took the broken taped glasses off her face and started to clean them with her shirt. Dorothy looked away.

“Liz, dear, why don't we gather your things for tonight? We'll be staying at a hotel, you'll need some clothes. Ms. Graham has gotten me all caught up.”

We all stood for an awkward moment, until Tilly grabbed Nellie's hand and said, “We gotta get back. You coming to the lounge, Liz?”

“Yeah, Till, we'll be there in a minute.” Dorothy watched as Nellie and Tilly padded down the hall. A random “fuck” and then “shit” came out of Nellie's mouth as they walked away.

“What a
vulgar-
mouthed child,” my mother finally said.

“Come on, Mom,” I said. “I'll show you my room and stuff.” While we walked through the halls, she was thinking so loudly, I could almost hear her. The click, click, click of her boots echoed through the corridors. The cement walls felt different with Dorothy here in them. Two worlds were colliding, and I was stuck somewhere between them. I was all jumbled up inside. We reached the open door of the lounge. The girls were sitting in their usual spots, most of them smoking. Wren was leaning against the wall. Dorothy recoiled at the sight of her scar, and then Wren almost smiled, which was rare.

“Mom, this is Wren,” I said. Dorothy looked down at her with a sad smile, lifted her eyebrows, and said, “Helllloooo, Wren.”

Wren got out a quiet “Hi.”

Deanna was sitting on the La-Z-Boy in a tube top and sweats, her pregnant belly hanging out. She was holding a Dr Pepper and a cigarette. She didn't look over. Gina, the new porcelain doll girl, sat on the couch. Amy looked up from the TV. “Hey,” she said.