Look at You Now (9 page)

Tilly put her head down and quietly said, “I know.”

Nellie gathered up the cards. “Yeah, I been worried, what will it be like and all that shit to have twins.” The thought of it blew my mind: Nellie was going to give birth to not one but two tiny babies.

The Morticia-looking girl came in from the hallway and told me I had a phone call. Before I got out the door, Tilly reminded me that her and Nellie's room was only two doors down from mine. I smiled.

“Hello?” I answered in the phone booth.

“Diz?”

“Hi, Dad. It's really good to hear your voice.”

“How's it going?”

“Okay.”

“That's good. Kate said you sounded pretty upset on the phone today. I feel terrible. I know it's not going to be easy, Diz. It's a tough situation all around, but you're a strong person.”

“Yeah.” I wasn't sure what he meant by that. I didn't feel strong at all. Maybe I used to be strong. But that felt long ago already.

“How you feeling? You still getting sick?” he asked.

“Sometimes. Dad, you think you could come visit?”

“Yes, of course.”

“This place is really nothing like I thought, Dad . . . and it's, well, it's really hard here. Think you could come
this
weekend?”

“Your mom is coming this weekend.”

“No, she's not anymore; she can't. So I was hoping maybe you could.”

“I won't to be able to make it to you for a while. I thought you were at that place so your mother could easily come visit you.” He paused. “I don't understand.”

“She has to work, Dad, she's got a job.” My mom was barely making ends meet.

“She made a commitment to come see you the first weekend. I'm sorry, I won't be able to make it up for several weeks. I have all this work I have to do.”

The lump in the back of my throat was trying to suffocate me. It was hard to breathe.

“Okay, I guess I'll see you next month, then.”

“Diz, stay strong. This will all be over soon; then everything will be back to normal.” I didn't believe that. Nothing was ever going to be normal again. “Remember not to mention your last name, honey, or talk about yourself. You're a private person.”

“I know, Dad.”

“I'll talk to you soon. Take good care of yourself.”

I hung the phone up and sat for a long time. I was out of hope. I was on my own, completely alone. I picked the phone back up, pulled the card out of my pocket, and dialed the number.

• • • •

Ms. Graham's door was closed when I arrived, so I knocked.

“Come in,” her voice said from inside.

“Hi. Sorry.”

“No problem, of course. What's going on?”

“I don't know if I can do this, Ms. Graham. I'm trying really hard but five months is a long, long, long time. Every day, every night I—I know I have to, but I don't know how to . . . how to be here and feel okay.”

“Are the girls giving you trouble?”

“I like some of them.”

“Alice said there was a ruckus around your room this afternoon?”

I wasn't sure I should tell her how the girls scared the crap out of me, that I'd felt positive I was going to be killed, that red-earring Deanna was one scary-ass girl who got in my face and rampaged through my room. In fifth grade, back in Winnetka, there was a long stretch when the boys were mean to me every day. They bullied me, I told on them, and in the end it only made it worse. My brother John told me you should never ever rat. It always makes things worse. I remembered that now.

“No, there wasn't a ruckus, they just wanted to hear me play the guitar.” And that was true, nothing bad happened. They'd only been curious.

“Oh, that's nice. I bet they enjoyed it.” Ms. Graham got up and went over to a little refrigerator she kept in her office. She turned around and put a half a sandwich, a napkin, and a little carton of orange juice in front of me. “Go ahead. You didn't eat, I gather?”

“No, I didn't. Thank you.” I took a bite of the fresh, normal turkey sandwich. I had so many thoughts spinning in my head, topped with the most recent: Neither my mother nor my father would be coming to visit this weekend, to bring me the piece of courage or hope or whatever it was I needed so badly. There was a long silence. Eventually it just came out. “I miss home, Ms. Graham. I want to go home, I really want to go home. I know I can't but I feel it so much.” That's all, that was my truth in a sentence. I needed to be truthful to someone. The tears were pouring out, as usual.

“Thank you for telling me that. You are brave, Liz.”

“I am?”

“Yes, you are. It takes courage to admit the truth and tell it to someone else.” I felt a pang of relief for a second. Maybe it was only the turkey sandwich, but something felt better. Ms. Graham went on. “We can all do so much more than we think we can, Liz. Life has a strange way of showing us who we are. I do believe you can do this. You can find a way to be okay here. All we have to do is get you to believe you can.”

I looked out the little window in her office at the dark landscape outside. The quiet and lonely fields and woods. I wanted to believe what she was saying, but didn't know if I could.

Ms. Graham looked at me. “You picked up the phone and called me . . . You're doing the best you can, right?”

“Yes.” I waited a few moments. Then I stood up and slowly headed for the door. “My head feels a little less crowded. Thanks again.”

“Liz?”

“Yeah, I mean, yes?”

“Yours was the first call I've gotten in almost all the years I've been here. I've given that card out I don't know how many times.” Ms. Graham smiled, which she didn't do often.

As I walked back to my room, I felt like there was more space to breathe. Maybe I just needed to hear someone say it out loud: I was going to be okay. I'd messed up, but maybe it wouldn't be messed up forever . . . And doing the best I could was maybe enough for now.

chapter
5

T
he sun was blasting through the window again as I opened my eyes. There was an annoying tapping coming from my door.

“You going to school, Liz?” It was Tilly, from the other side of the door. I heard rustling and voices as I got my bearings. I was still there; it wasn't all a dream. I guess it was never going to be a dream. I leaned over my growing stomach to get up.

“Yeah. Come on in, Tilly.” Tilly bounded in the door like a puppy.

“Hi, I got you some graham crackers and milk. You missed breakfast.” She sat down on the opposite bed in the same art smock she'd been wearing since I arrived, almost a week ago. I grabbed my clothes off the dresser, tripped over my shoes, dropped the clothes, picked them back up, and stumbled my way to the bathroom.

“You're not a morning person, huh, Liz?” she said.

“Nope.”

I turned on the faucet. The ice-cold water coming from the winter pipes slapped my face. I grabbed a dirty T-shirt to dry off and looked straight into my eyes in the mirror. I wondered if I would ever see who I used to be—the old me, before any of this happened. And then I heard, “Come on, bitches, let's move it.” I looked again in the mirror and thought, Where the hell am I? Nellie was at the door, looking morning pregnant and miserable, with a weird winter hat and a men's oversized wool coat that was so big she looked like she was kidding. I threw my hair in a ponytail, reached for my coat, grabbed the graham crackers in the cup, and poured the milk in. Tilly pulled a plastic spoon out of her pocket and handed it to me.

“Gotta eat, girl. You don't want to faint again.” She smiled and I ate as we walked toward the entrance. We stopped and stood in a line with the other girls at the guard gate entrance near Ms. Graham's office. Nellie grabbed me by the shoulder and walked me over to the guard woman, the same ignoring black woman I'd seen several times in the last few days. Nellie smiled at her, like they were good friends.

“Hey, Chief, this is Liz. Liz, meet Chief, you know, from
Cuckoo's Nest
?” The black lady smiled a big smile and high-fived Nellie through the gate.

“You don't mess with Chief, Liz,” Nellie said. Chief smiled as Nellie shouted, “Hit it.” She buzzed the steel door open for us. We headed outside, single file, and followed the path up the hill to the schoolhouse. It was the little Hansel and Gretel cabin I'd seen hiding in the trees during my walk around the grounds. It was the painful kind of freezing, snowy and windy, and Nellie was struggling with her massive stomach. She kept losing her balance and swearing like a trucker. I walked behind her and put my arm out a couple times to keep her from falling. She shouted through the wind to me, “Who are you from
Cuckoo's Nest
?”

I shouted back, “I have to think about it—there aren't too many characters left.”

Finally we were there at the little schoolhouse. Nellie climbed up the two stairs and shook off the snow. There was a small room with several metal folding chairs and almost nothing else. There looked to be a couple of stairs in the back that led into another tiny room with some books. A nice-looking young woman with straight brown hair pulled back in a light blue ribbon was leaning against the window. Nellie struggled with her coat and then threw it on the floor. I picked it up and hung both our coats on a hook by the door. The girls all sat down in the chairs. There were about nine of them total. Tilly waved to me and pointed to the seat next to her. “Sit here. This will be the most boring fucking few hours of your life.”

Red-earring Deanna had her coat wrapped around her like a blanket and a rancid look on her face. “What the fuck, is there no heat in here? You people trying to kill us?”

The woman with the ribbon in her hair looked up and spoke. “There is a problem with the heat. I apologize for that, but we're going to get the fireplace going. That should help until we can get the heat fixed.”

“So now we're the little fucking house on the little fucking prairie?” Deanna said.

“We're waiting for maintenance to come light it,” the ribbon woman said.

Nellie dragged a chair along the cold cement floor next to Tilly. The three of us sat quietly. The other girls were strangely resigned and lifeless, like there was nothing to be done about the cold and this boring situation, like this was just the way it was going to be forever.

After a while the ribbon lady walked up to my chair and said, “You must be Liz.”

“Hi. Yes, I am.”

“I'm Maryann. Nice to meet you, and welcome.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you have any questions for me?” I wondered who the heck
she was and what she did—did she work at the facility like Alice or Ms. Graham?—but I didn't want to ask. Deanna rolled her eyes and mockingly blurted out, “Do you have any questions? Thannnnk youuu, buuullllsshiiit, who cares?” She scoffed and flipped the finger to both of us. Maryann just ignored her and made her way to a seat near the big window. Nothing happened. This lady was a grown-up, and clearly the person in charge, but she didn't say or instruct anything, she just sat in her mittens reading a book. A good half hour passed. I was freezing. Nellie was miserable and looked sick. I finally stood up and approached the mitten-wearing Maryann.

“Um . . . do you think it would be okay for me to light a fire?”

“Well, I don't know. Do you know how?”

“Yes.”

Nellie was listening. “If she knows how, she can . . . right, Maryann? Don't be a dumbfuck. We're freezing.”

“Okay then, Liz, give it a go.”

There were a couple of old logs in the fireplace. I went outside and found several dry twigs on the side of the schoolhouse and a pile of dry logs in the back. I grabbed everything I could carry and headed back in. There was notebook paper on a shelf in the little room. I scrunched several pieces into balls and then piled it all in under the logs, put a new log on, and asked Nellie if I could borrow her lighter. The girls watched me carefully. In a few seconds there was a pretty good fire going.

Tilly laughed. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“Girl Scouts. What? Has no one here ever been a Girl Scout?” As I turned around from fixing the fire, I could see no one was smiling. It was silent. Deanna finally said, “Yeah, that's why we're fucking here, 'cause we were all good little Girl Scouts. Fucking moron.” I felt so foolish. I said a quiet “Sorry” under my breath. The girls all pulled their chairs closer to the fire. I walked around the chilly room, trying to figure out where we were and what we'd be doing. There were some old water-damaged Nancy Drew paperbacks
on the floor, and several big picture books for toddlers. Tilly came over and stood next to me.

“Thanks for making the fire.”

“Sure. What the heck is this place?”

“School.”

School?
This was the school? The place I'd be going so my credits could transfer and I could graduate from high school, and then go to college? What the heck?

I asked Tilly, “Do you do anything here? Read, write, work in workbooks, draw, anything?”

“Not really. Not much different from my real school actually. We used to read stuff here, but not anymore. Some of these girls don't know how to read anyway.” They don't know how to
read
? I really was through the looking glass. I asked Tilly incredulously, “Is Maryann supposed to be the
teacher
?”

“She is the teacher.”

“But she's just sitting there.”

Tilly laughed. “Welcome to your new school.” So that was it? The girls went to this room every day and
sat
for hours?

This was an entire world away from my high school, New Trier. I thought about my adviser, Ms. White. She was a teacher I was assigned to check in with every morning for the four years I would be there. She took attendance, discussed the rights and responsibilities we had as students, and chose topics to debate to get us to open up about our thoughts and lives. They looked out for us at New Trier, and no one slipped through the cracks. It was a school that was bursting with opportunity for overachieving students, whose sights were set on attending the best colleges in the country. It was ranked the third best public school in the United States, which my dad boasted about often. And until this moment, I'd never given any of it a thought. I was a casual student who had been somewhat uninterested in my studies, indifferent about my grades and participation. I got by reasonably well with little effort. Last time I saw my adviser, Ms. White, just before Christmas
break, she'd sat me down and given me the old you-have-such-potential, why-don't-you-try-to-focus-on-your-studies lecture. I had taken all of it for granted: all of her respect and interest in me. I looked over at the ribbon lady, Maryann, and suddenly felt horrible. Mortified, actually.

The Morticia girl tapped my shoulder from behind. I was jolted back to the moment. She asked, “The fire's going out—can you fix it?” The girls were all warming their hands in front of their big bellies, fighting for a spot near the flames. I took Tilly outside and we filled a bucket with kindling and sticks and dry pinecones. We came back in with enough to keep a fire going for days. I put a new log on, and the girls moved closer. Nellie sat back quietly. I could feel her looking at me.

“Lighter.”

“Oh yeah.” I handed it back to her.

“She used to read stuff sometimes, but everyone got so rowdy Maryann stopped. I guess I can't blame her,” Nellie said.

“What did she read?”

“I don't know, different stuff. There's a box of magazines and shit over there. I saved this one 'cause I want to read it.” She pulled a worn copy of a
Reader's Digest
magazine out from her big coat pocket. I read the subtitles on the cover out loud.

“Complete guide to needlework, Your garden, your home, Parenting twins. Did you read the article on parenting twins?”

“Not yet.” She handed me the magazine and said, “Here, you read it.” I laughed, pushed it back, and said, “I'm not having twins, you read it.” Then I realized: Holy crap, maybe Nellie couldn't read. I carefully reached back for the magazine and began to read the story about the twins out loud. It was written by a woman who had given birth to identical twins, a single mother who lived in northern California. Nellie was sitting so close she was almost in my lap. Tilly and a few of the other girls listened too. By the third page, everyone was listening.

Deanna interrupted. “Read fucking louder, radio girl, so we
can hear you.” The story began by talking about the difficulties of carrying twins, and then moved into a slightly graphic description of the birth. The girls all screeched and groaned when the story got to the labor part. Then it moved on to meeting the babies and becoming a family. Nellie rubbed her big belly and said, “See? These babies are gonna make my life good.”

Maryann, our non-teacher, walked toward me with a big box and placed it on the floor at my feet. It was filled with dozens of
Reader's Digest
magazines. I looked up at her, and she smiled a little and made her way back to the window. The girls swarmed the box. They talked about the pictures and some read the titles aloud. The young scar-faced girl sat down, opened one of the magazines to a story, and handed it to me.

I read seven stories from the magazines that morning. Most of the girls ended up lying on their coats on the floor in front of the fireplace. The snow outside never relented, and Deanna ended up tending the fire like an expert until it was time to leave a few hours later. The school day was over—a school day unlike any I'd had before.

When we got back to the facility, the guard lady—Chief—came out from around the gate and stood in front of me with two huge boxes. “You got some mail, girl.”

Tilly took the boxes from her while I signed for them. We carried them back to my room.

“Who are they from?” Tilly asked.

“I think my dad and his wife.”

She laughed. “Ha, not your stepmother? Your dad's wife?”

“Yeah. Well, yeah, I don't really see her as a stepmother.”

Nellie handed me a key to open the box. I ran it down the side seam of the cardboard, reached in, and pulled out a brand-new hotplate, several cans of soup, four boxes of saltines, canned fruit, peanut butter, jelly, pretzels, raisins, Fruit Roll-Ups, a huge box of SweeTarts, and a few jars of peanuts. At the bottom was a wrapped box. I opened the box to find a windup alarm clock with Snoopy on the face and Woodstock on the top with a hammer to hit the
bell. A note inside read: Hope this helps, we love you, Kate and Dad.

Nellie snickered. “Shit, sounds like a pretty fucking good stepmother to me. What's in the other one?” I opened the second box and pulled out three plush yellow bath towels, a few washcloths, and a pink terry-cloth robe.

“Man, come on, I've never had a robe. Can I try it on?” Tilly asked. I nodded and Tilly put the robe on over her smock. At the bottom of the box were two pairs of blue jeans. Nellie pulled them out and unfolded them.

“Look at this shit?” she said. The jeans had a sewn-in piece of black stretchy fabric; there was no button and zipper, just a big elastic panel. Nellie grabbed the black elastic part of the jeans and stretched it out about three feet; we all burst out laughing. Nellie was flabbergasted. “What the fuck? This is for your stomach . . . get it? It's for your big fat baby gut. That's fucking hilarious, pregnant jeans?”

Tilly grabbed the other pair and stretched the stomach part over her head. And then read the tag. “Look, it says Mama Jeans.” I dug into the box again and pulled out a beautiful toasty fleece sweater and three maternity shirts.

I finally decided to unpack, to put the clothes and things from my suitcase in the drawers, along with the stuff Kate and my dad sent. It was all too real to ignore.
I surrender
. I was there, and I was going to be there a long, long time. I stuffed my suitcase in the back of the closet and put all the food in the other empty dresser. I pulled the fleece sweater over my head and felt the cozy soft warmth against my chest. Nellie and Tilly sat on the bed watching me put clothes away. They reminded me of the twins, just sitting there staring at me, the way Jennifer and Tory sometimes did. It comforted me—it made me feel like they might need me a little.