As She Grows (16 page)

“Yeah? You like him?” Eric gets excited and leans his face up to the bowl. “Bought him today. His name is Freddy.” He taps on the glass, the fish ignores him, but Eric sits there staring and smiling anyway, like it’s his child or something. Sometimes it seems like I’m a thousand years older than he is. “You want to feed him? I bought these fish treats”—he offers me a little plastic Baggie full of flaky orange things. I shake my head, declining, but then feel bad right away because he seems disappointed. So I reach forward, pinch some flakes, and sprinkle them in.

“What do you think they taste like?” I ask as we watch Freddy frantically suck them off the surface.

“Don’t know. You want to try?” He jokingly offers me the bag again.

“Okay,” and I dip a finger in and put the thin flakes on my tongue. “Hmm. I think that was steak and broccoli flavour.”

Eric laughs and leans back in his chair. I realize that I’ve sort of missed him. “So,” he says, “what have you been doing? Haven’t seen you for a while.”

“Just sleeping mostly. Thinking. Listening to music.”

“Thinking about what?”

“Stuff. School. The house. Mark. Stuff.”

“Did you eat?”

“A little. Not very hungry.” He writes something down and I feel the need to explain before he jumps to his therapy conclusions. “I get like that sometimes, just need some time off, you know? Away. Only, I can’t go away, so I just go to sleep.”

“Were you thinking about your mom?”

“No.”

“Your grandmother?”

“No,” I shoot him a look of surprise and then annoyance. “She’s the last thing on my mind.”

“Can we talk about her? Our conversation sort of stopped short last time.”

“Whatever,” I respond, pissed off that he’s pulling out the psychobabble, just when we were having a normal conversation.

“Have you talked to her?”

“No.”

“Do you want to talk to her? I mean, are you trying to avoid her?”

“No. I’d talk to her, like if I saw her in the street or something. I’m not mad at her. I just don’t want to go over and have afternoon tea, you know?”

“Do you worry about her?”

“Sometimes.” Eric stays silent and I can tell he is waiting for me to say more, because he moves his finger up to his lips and gently taps, as if signing for me to talk. I roll my eyes, realizing the truth is the shortest way out of this one. “Sometimes I wonder who’s looking after her. I did pretty much everything for her, shopped, cleaned. For all I know she could be dead for a week, lying on the floor. It’s not like I wonder that all the time, it just crosses my mind.”

“Well, how would you feel if I said she’s okay?” I look at him. “She called me. Said she wants to see you.”

“She called you?” I ask, annoyed and shocked all at once.

“Yes.”

“Why the fuck would she call
you?
” I can’t stand the thought of Elsie talking to Eric. I think of how she used to talk to Mr. Hensley, convincing him that I’m the one with the problem.

“Maybe she misses you.”

“Ha!”

“She wants you to go by the apartment.”

“She probably needs me to do something for her. She probably wants me to clean.”

“Do you want me to ask her to come in? All three of us?” His words send panic all over me.

“No,” I blurt out like an idiot. I don’t want him to know her. I don’t want him to see her. I’d be too embarrassed. “I’ll stop by. See what she wants.”

I pick a time when Elsie would be out at work, figure I’ll just leave a note. But as soon as my hand touches the doorknob to the apartment, I know she’s there. I hear the TV and smell the Marlboros. And then, as I walk in, something strange. Floor cleaner?

I almost don’t recognize the kitchen. At first I think she’s painted it, but then I realize that the original colour when it’s clean is white, not dull yellow. There aren’t any dishes in the sink and the table is cleared of magazines and ashtrays and unopened bills. There’s even a new rug by the fridge, blue and green, with yellow circles on it.

“Elsie?” I yell. I peer around the doorway and into the living room. Comforted with what I see: just like it always is, messy, worse than ever. The radio and the TV are on. “Elsie?” I head to my room and find Elsie’s back emerging from the closet. My clothes are piled on the bed.

“Oh, hi,” she says, as if she wasn’t surprised to see me. “Just in time. You want some of your clothes? I’m cleaning out the closet and putting my stuff in. I need the space.”

“I have what I want,” I answer coldly, knowing that she just wants to get me angry. “Give it away to the less fortunate. Oh, no,
sorry, that would be me.” She doesn’t respond, scratching the hangers along the metal bar. Only she’s pulling them so fast, I know she’s not really looking at the clothes. “I can’t stay.”

“Yeah, okay. I’m busy anyway.”

“What happened to the kitchen?”

“Me and Barb cleaned it. It was her idea.” Barb used to be our family social worker, years ago. But now she just works with Elsie. For some reason, she likes her. She tells me that my grandmother is a good person in a bad life. When she says this I’m tempted to tell her all the things that could change her mind, but I don’t. Because if Barb looks out for her, that means I don’t have to.

“How’s that shelter you’re at?”

“It’s not a shelter, it’s a group home.”

“Well, whatever it is, how is it?”

“Fine.” I glance around the room. She’s been sleeping in here, but everything else looks pretty much the same.

“Good.” She turns around, puts her hands on her hips, and looks me up and down. I look away. “Jesus Christ, what the hell have they been feeding you? You’re fat.”

“I am not.” I look down at my body to confirm there is no sudden bulge.

“You pregnant?”

“What? You crazy?” I deny, wondering how she could possibly guess. And there’s no way I’d tell her, not face to face, to see the satisfaction in her eyes knowing that she was right about me all along. I cross my arms and look around the room. “You haven’t moved my stuff,” I say, trying to distract her.

Elsie ignores my comment, her eyes fixed on me. “Don’t be getting pregnant or you’ll end up a no-good mother like me.” She starts picking up clothes off the ground. I consider denying it once more, but let it drop.

“You’re not a bad mother,” I say, more out of obligation.

“Hah. One daughter’s dead and my granddaughter’s at a shelter. I’m a bad mother.”

“It’s a group home. And besides, there’s always Aunt Sharon.” Elsie glares at me when I say this. “I didn’t plan it this way.” She fumbles in her shirt pocket for a cigarette.

“I know.” And for a second there it almost gets nice. It’s so pathetically nice, I feel like we’re in a movie.

Elsie lights her smoke and then shoots an angry look at me. “I’m not gonna change, so don’t get your little therapy people to call me.”

“What are you talking about? I didn’t get anyone to call you.”

“That guy”—she waves her cigarette in the air—“that guy asked me to come in and talk, ‘open up lines of communication, start the healing,’” she says in a mocking voice. “Fucking dick.” She storms past me out into the living room.

“I didn’t tell him to call.” I pursue her into the room, enraged that Eric lied to me.

“I can just see you in that little office,” Elsie says, now picking up newspapers from the coffee table, “acting like some little fucking princess who’s got it so bad. Did you tell him how you fuck any guy who says boo to you? Did you tell him about beating the crap out of that girl last year? Or that your boyfriend is a drug dealer?”

“Shut up!”

“You didn’t tell him about that, did ya?”

“Shut up! You don’t know anything about Mark. You don’t know anything about me, so don’t go saying shit you don’t know about.”

“Tell your shrink not to call. I sure as hell don’t need anyone tellin’ me how awful I am.”

Suddenly I get the urge to flee. My head rushes, my heart pounds, and I just need to get out of there, for good. “Don’t worry,
Grandma.
” I turn and look around me for something to pick up. Something to take with me. Anything. “I can tell you that myself.” I pick up the clay pencil holder, the one I made in grade three. I pass her in the kitchen, now sitting at the table, staring straight ahead, deeply inhaling her cigarette as if she wanted her body to get sucked right into the filter.

I slam the door behind me. My head swirls and I have to hold onto the wall for balance. I look down and see my hand clenching the pencil holder and I wonder why I took it. I think of the lady in the building across the road, whose basement apartment burned down when I was a kid. All she saved was some old jacket she hadn’t worn in years. She just knelt outside of her smoking apartment, clutching this ratty coat, and, in between wails, listed off all the things that were going up in smoke:
my photos, my
wedding ring, my CD player
.

As I’m walking to the bus stop I begin to taste sour tears in my mouth. I feel like a moron when I pass by some guys chilling on a bench, liquid pissing from my eyes. I lift my hand to wipe my wet face and I’m suddenly engulfed with the smell of Elsie. In my sweater. On my skin. Like she’s inside me, seeping out of my pores. I spit on my hands, rubbing them together, washing her off me. Then I frantically start wiping my face, hard and rough with my scratchy wool sweater, until my skin burns.

Eric’s office door is closed but I push it open forcefully. “Don’t talk to her,” I command. Eric looks up from the client across from him, a small freckle-faced boy, only about ten.

“Excuse me, Snow. Not only are you being rude, you’re interrupting my session.” He quickly rises from his chair as he speaks. His face is red, and though he’s trying to hide it, I’ve never seen him so angry. “I’ll be done in ten minutes if you want, but you’re going to have to cool down first.” He shuts the door in my face and I am so mad my body burns. I kick the door and storm down the hall, past the washroom, and out to the back of the office building. I pace back and forth in the gravel parking lot, kicking at stones and car tires. I drag my hand along the top of the mesh-wire fence and stop in my tracks when skin rips on a sharp broken wire.

“Ouch!” I raise my finger to my mouth and the sweet blood and bitter dirt dissolve on my tongue. After a few seconds, I inspect the injury. The cut is deep and thin and clean. I pull the skin apart, hoping for a glimpse of bone. Disappointed, I tightly grip the base of my finger and press upward toward the tip, as if squeezing the last bit of toothpaste from the tube. A line of blood pools on my purple finger. And when there’s enough, I walk over to the back door, take my red ink, and smudge the letters
f-u-c-k
on the cold metal.

About a half-hour later, I’m back standing in Eric’s doorway. He is writing something at his desk and doesn’t appear to notice me.

“Don’t call her,” I say.

“Come in.” Eric motions me to sit down without even raising his head. Then, after a few seconds, he gets up and comes to sit at our table. “Now, what’s all this about?”

“Just don’t fuckin’ call her.”

“I didn’t call Elsie.
She
called me, then I called her back, but then she didn’t have anything to say so I asked her some questions.”

“You didn’t call her?”

“No. I only returned her call.”

“Swear you didn’t call her?”

“Yes. She said she wanted to see you.”

“She told me you called her.”

“What can I say?” He raises his open hands, like he’s at a loss, like he’s all innocent. “I’d tell you if I did, Snow. She called me first, left a message saying she wanted to see you, so I called her back.”

Then it occurred to me. “Did she sound wasted on the message? All funny, like slurring?”

“I’m not sure, maybe. Sounded like she just woke up.”

“Shit,” I mutter, kicking the table leg. Eric starts shuffling papers, seemingly organizing, but I see the corners of his mouth upturned. He thinks this is a breaking point. He will bend me back and forth, till I heat and crack. “You don’t know her,” I say. “You don’t know me. We’re not some little stupid therapy people who don’t get it. She gets it. She gets all of it. Just like me. I get it. How come we’re the only people that can accept that?”