Born That Way (7 page)

“Mom, no, it was a mistake! It was just salt water!”

“Oh lord,” she says, and retches again. She puts so much effort into it that it looks like her stomach is going to heave right up out of her mouth.

Dad comes in and puts his hand on her shoulder. “You okay, Hon?”

She shakes her head. “Someone is trying to poison me.”

“It was a mistake,” I tell him. “I put my extra barnacle water in the juice container in the fridge.” Then it occurs to me. “She must have drunk straight out of the carton, like we're not supposed to.”

“You weren't trying to kill her, then,” says Dad.

I stare at him. They have both lost their minds. Why would I try to kill my own mother? I am going to have to read up on Hamlet now to figure out what they are so worried about. I can see I am going to spend the rest of my life on Google trying to understand the adult world. “You can't kill people with salt water!”

“That's true enough. Evelyn, did you hear that?”

I go over and join Dad in rubbing Mom's back.

Overall I'd have to say that my campaign isn't going very well.

That's when the phone rings. Since Mom can't talk very well and Dad is busy comforting her, I pick it up.

“Hello Pipsqueak.”

“Oh hi, Grandpa.”

“I just remembered I was supposed to phone and talk to your mom about my promise to you.”

“I don't know that this is a good time, Grandpa.”

Mom is suddenly at my shoulder. Her eyes are red and swollen and she wipes them on her sleeve. “I'll talk to him,” she says and motions that I should hand her the phone. Behind her I see Dad heading back to the family room and the computer. He doesn't look very happy.

Mom's looking pretty fierce. And kind of angry with me. This really doesn't seem like a good time for Grandpa to be promoting my cause, but I can't think of anything to do to prevent it other than hanging up. “Mom wants to talk to you,” I say, stalling as much as I dare. “She's having a difficult morning. She swallowed some sea water I left in the refrigerator.”

Grandpa laughs. “Well that was a silly thing for her to do, wasn't it? Let me talk to her, Pipsqueak.”

So I hand Mom the phone.

“Hi, Dad,” she says. Her voice is still gravelly from throwing up, but then she stops talking. Her eyes start streaming again and she turns her back to me and stands there, leaning on the wall, listening to Grandpa.

I head back to my room and do some stretching exercises while I wait.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I wait and nothing happens.

I expect there'll be some sort of immediate family conference, but no.

I hear Mom hang up the phone, then see her out my window dead-heading the roses. Then I think she goes for a walk.

At noon I come out of my room and offer to bake some muffins for lunch, which Dad says would be a great idea. I'm starving and need to keep my growth on track so I eat some raisins and walnuts while I'm preparing the batter. Then Mom comes in and goes right to the family room. Fortunately I have finished with the mixing machine so I can hear at least some of what they're talking about. Mostly they talk too quietly, but I do hear Dad say something about Grandpa being an interfering old goat and then Mom uses some words that she's not supposed to.

Over lunch Mom announces that she wants to take me over to visit with Taylor in the afternoon. I know from her tone that she's expecting some opposition from me, but I'm curious to know whether Taylor remembers the dream she was in, so I tell Mom this is okay with me.

She looks surprised. “You don't have to feel guilty, Cupcake. I know you didn't intend for me to drink that . . . stuff. At least not consciously.”

“Evelyn, let's not get into that again,” says Dad.

“Stay out of this, Tony,” Mom snaps.

Dad puts another warm muffin on his plate, splits it, slathers on way more butter than he's supposed to, then carries it to the refrigerator, grabs a beer and goes into the family room.

“We're not supposed to have food at the computer,” I tell Mom.

She sighs. “I think we should let it go for today.”

Mom makes a phone call, we put the dishes in the dishwasher, then climb in the car.

Auntie Sally has a glass of white wine ready for Mom on her kitchen table. I am, as usual, directed down the hall to Taylor's room, where I am relieved to find only Taylor and no other sisters. So it doesn't take long for me to swing the conversation around to dreams and unicorns and to figure out that Taylor has no recollection whatsoever of being in a dream with me and Kansas where we cross a river on horseback and hear a unicorn laugh.

I think I've been pretty discreet. If I can help it I'd rather Taylor not know what I'm driving at, but I guess my expressing any interest at all in unicorns is unusual enough to raise her suspicions.

“I thought you didn't believe in things like this,” she says.

“Things like what?”

“Oh, spiritual things.”

“Spiritual? You mean like the magic kingdom?” I don't mean to be sarcastic, but it comes out this way, probably because I'm nervous.

Taylor gives me a look of total patience and sympathy that makes me want to punch her. Then she makes it worse by saying, “Well, maybe you're too young to understand.”

“I can understand all sorts of things.” I decide not to mention hermaphrodites as examples.

“You understand things in the material world, but the spiritual world is different.”

“My dad says spirituality is a bunch of flakey nonsense for people who can't handle reality.”

“Your dad . . . ” says Taylor, then stops and smiles, as though she's reminded herself to be kind. “So how's Stephanie's marketing campaign working for you?”

I know she's intentionally changed the subject, but the way she says it is almost as irritating as what she was talking about before. “What do you mean, Stephanie's campaign? It's my campaign.”

“Stephanie's good at talking people into things. I've had to learn how to resist her, which is hard because she's older and used to getting her way.”

“She didn't talk me into anything. And it's going fine. I like gorilla marketing.”

She gives me yet another annoying sympathetic look, then her face brightens. “I know—if you want to learn about spiritual things, you should let me read your palm. I'm learning how, I've got a book about it.” She slides a slim volume out of her bookcase and flings it onto the bedspread where it lies across the top half of the unicorn's eye, giving it a sinister expression. Taylor drags me by my arm and sits me beside her on the bed, then pries open my fist and holds it on her thigh, palm up. And doesn't say anything.

“What?” I say. Even though I do not believe in palm reading her silence is alarming.

“You've only got one line,” she says. “You're supposed to have two. See, like mine.” She offers her palm for comparison. She's right. I'm missing a line.

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“I don't know.” She opens her book and flips through the diagrams. “They all have two lines—one's your heart line and the other's your head line.”

“I don't like this.” I wrench my hand away from her. “Can we do something else?”

She closes her book reluctantly. Then she seems to get a new idea. “We can play Ouija.”

“Wee-gee?” This sounds like it might be French or baby-talk, and either way I won't be interested. But anything to keep her away from my palm. Maybe I'm an alien and that's why I only have one line.

Taylor goes to her computer (her own computer, in her bedroom, out of parental surveillance, talk about lucky) and pulls up a site:
Ouija—The Original Talking Board
.

“Watch this,” she says. At the top of the screen is a box for a question. She types: “Who does Taylor love?” then places the cursor over a triangular section in the middle which proceeds to move about the screen pointing to individual letters that eventually spell
MANY
. “Hah,” she laughs. “That's because I'm so spiritual and full of love!”

“You're moving the cursor,” I tell her.

“I am not. I'm following the pointer on the screen.”

“Maybe subconsciously you're moving it.”

“Well you try it then.” She pops out of her chair and swivels it around in my direction.

This is obviously a scam, but I sit in the chair and type in my question. “How long until I can get a horse?” I put my hand on the mouse and then follow the pointer which goes to the number one at the bottom of the screen then slides back to its starting point and doesn't move.

“One month?” says Taylor. “Wow, that's pretty soon! Your campaign must be going great! Ask something else.”

I don't know what else to ask. I've already asked the only question that matters to me. One month? How is that going to happen?

“Find out about boys. Ask who loves you.”

This is a dumb question, and I don't care really, but I type it in anyway and the pointer slides around the screen.
N . . . O . . . N . . . E.
Noone?

“No one?” says Taylor. “That's mean. That can't be right. Do it another way. Ask who you love.”

I'm not liking this game. No one loves me? My question hadn't mentioned anything specific about boys and the answer, even though it's a total scam, feels like a dagger in my heart. However I can't leave it on a bad note, so I type in, “Who does Sylvia love?” and the pointer goes
K . . . A . . . N . . . S . . . A
. . . and before it can finish I am so frightened that I slide the mouse up so the cursor is on the big red
X
in the top right corner and I exit the site.

“What did you do that for?”

I'm feeling sick to my stomach. “I don't like this spiritual stuff.”

“It's nothing to be scared of. It's not black magic or anything like that, it says so right on the home page.”

I want to leave, I want to go home and be with my barnacles, but I know Mom won't be ready and I'm not in her good books because of the salt water thing and because of whatever happened in her talk with Grandpa.

“Look,” says Taylor, “all you need is some protection and you'll be fine.” She rummages in the top drawer of her desk and pulls out some white fur on a key chain. “How about a rabbit's foot?”

“Are you kidding? The paw off a dead bunny?”

“Oh well, right, it's more a good luck charm anyway. And you need something in the way of a spiritual protector. That's what I like about unicorns. They are strong and good. Any time I feel frightened I imagine my unicorn is protecting me and surrounding us with white light and love. Try it. Close your eyes and imagine.”

I close my eyes and see the unicorn from my dreams, laughing. My eyes pop open.

“You're not trying hard enough. You are a virgin, aren't you? Because only virgins can tame unicorns.”

This is so disgusting that I refuse to answer. I have no plans ever for not being a virgin.

“Okay, just checking, you never know these days. Close your eyes. Imagine you're surrounded by white light and a beautiful unicorn is guarding you with his golden horn.”

I try again. I see the unicorn. He's looking kind of smug but he's not laughing any more. There's white light all over the place and Kansas is standing on the other side of the unicorn with a hand on his back and I start to cry.

CHAPTER NINE

What a disaster of a day. Mom is mad at me for trying to poison her, perhaps only subconsciously, but still. Dad is mad at Grandpa. Mom and Dad are mad at each other. I have cried in front of Taylor, who will now think I'm even more of a baby than she used to think, and she'll tell her sisters and pretty soon everyone in the world will know. I'm exhausted, but also so scared stiff by that wee-gee game that I don't want to go to sleep. What if I have a dream with evil spirits that do something to me or take me away or kill me or eat my soul? What if I wake up a zombie or don't wake up at all because I'm dead?

I decide to stay up reading all night. I don't know how many nights I can do this before dying from lack of sleep, but I don't care.

Unfortunately, Mom sees the light coming from underneath my door and tells me to put it out and go to sleep. Before I turn off the light I move the barnacle family from my desk to my bedside table. I figure I can talk to them all night long and stay awake that way. There's a bit of light coming in around my curtains from the streetlight so I can see the dark outline of the rock in the white dish and the faint jagged lines of the barnacles under the water.

After I hear Mom and Dad go to bed, I sit up and throw off the covers because if I'm cold and not too cozy I won't fall asleep. But, as usual, the furnace has been turned down, so by eleven o-clock I'm feeling pretty chilled. I put on a sweater and a pair of socks. It wouldn't be so bad if I had a computer in my room like Taylor. I could stay awake all night playing Tetris and doing internet searches. Then again, why couldn't I do this anyway?

I crack open my door and sneak a look down the hallway. No lights, no noise. I tiptoe down to the family room where the computer is in sleep mode like everyone else except me. I turn it on and while I'm waiting for the start-up functions to finish I swivel in the chair and think through the things I need to look up. There's that Hamlet stuff. Unicorns I've had enough of for now, I don't want anything scary. Definitely no more wee-gee. That takes me back to barnacles, and I remember that when I'd looked up
bisexual
in the dictionary it hadn't been much help. So I type it into Google which takes me to Wikipedia and thank goodness this time no photographs pop up. But it's not all that interesting either. I find a reference to bisexuality in non-human animals and click on that, but there's no mention of barnacles. I go back to the main Google page for other sites, and there are bisexual playgrounds and bisexual chat groups and bisexual support groups. I blearily click on each one, then hit the back button because there's nothing that interesting. No bisexual ponies. As a matter of fact it all looks pretty boring. I am very tired. I can hardly keep my eyes open. Still it's a good time to do research with no one peering over my shoulder for a change, so I feel some need to take advantage of the time. After all, I have my campaign to consider, which leads me to thinking I could use some new ideas about gorilla marketing so I type that into the query box and Google says, “Did you mean guerilla?” This is so embarrassing. All that time I've been saying “gorilla” and it's supposed to be “guerilla”. Quietly I say each word aloud, wondering if people noticed me using the wrong term. They don't sound much different. I may have gotten away with it. I try to remember how many people I spoke to saying “gorilla” but I'm so tired my brain folds in on itself. I try to play Tetris but my coordination is off, and then I play Solitaire but this is even more boring than Wikipedia so finally I give up, turn off the computer and sneak back to my room.

As soon as I'm there I feel scared again, which wakes me up a little. Plus it's cold, even with my sweater and socks on.

I promise myself that I will stay awake if I only put my legs under the covers. I won't lie down, I'll prop myself on my pillows and sit up all night. There's a bit of light coming from my clock radio, not enough to read by but enough to look at the pictures in my equestrian supply catalogue. I retrieve it from the stack of Archie comics, then sit in bed and turn the pages as quietly as I can.

I guess I nod off for a second without knowing it, because I wake with a start and the catalogue is gone and I'm lying flat out under the covers and I feel with my foot that there is someone sitting on the end of my bed. A shadowy figure is outlined against the curtains. My heart is going a hundred miles an hour and I try to scream but I can't. I can't move a muscle, somehow I've become a paraplegic and I'm frozen in bed, exactly where an axe-murderer would want me.

“Hey.” It's a woman's voice, which is not what I would expect for an axe-murderer. In fact it's a voice I recognize. It's Kansas.

I move my eyes around searching for an open window or door, but everything is sealed tight. I don't know how she broke in here, but then again I'm so glad to see her I don't care.

“Having a tough night?”

I manage a nod. The paralysis seems to be receding.

She smiles understandingly. I can see her face now, there is more light in the room. Maybe the moon has come up.

“There's something you should know about your barnacles.”

She's using the same tone as Mom employs when she has a new sexuality metaphor to foist on me, so I prepare myself for the worst but it's as though she can read my thoughts because she says, “Oh no, not that stuff. I couldn't care less what sex they are.”

I am so relieved I could hug her. It is wonderful to find someone else in the world who isn't obsessed with sex or boys.

She rubs my foot through the covers. “Barnacles are really just little shrimps.”

I know that anyone else telling me this story would take the opportunity to point out that barnacles are just little shrimps like me, but Kansas doesn't do that. “Well, they're shrimp-like anyway. They're not exactly shrimps. But they are crustaceans, like shrimps are. One difference is that shrimps have armor that they carry with them. Barnacles do something else—they build a limestone house around themselves for protection and safety. Then they reach out into the water and kick what food they need into their house.”

I remember reading something like that on Google.

“I'm thinking you've forgotten about your limestone fortification,” she says.

“What fortification?” Hey, I can talk! This is great.

“Well you live in this good house, for one thing. And you have your own room with your own stuff in it. And two parents and an extended family who are all looking out for you in their way. And you've got me.”

“Yeah.”

“So there's nothing to be afraid of.”

“Really?”

“Really. You are fine. Everything's fine. It's all on track.”

“I get scared sometimes.”

“Well that's sensible. And it's why we need limestone fortifications.”

She sits for a minute so I can think about what she's said, and she rubs my foot, then she holds it tight and waggles it. “Now, the other thing you need to focus on is kicking more of what you need into your house.”

“I'm doing the guerilla marketing.” I pronounce it carefully to be sure she understands that I know we're not talking about big monkeys.

“There are more difficulties ahead of you. You need to come back and see me. In the daytime.”

“But your stable isn't finished. And you don't want to hire me until you've harrowed your fields to kill the parasites.”

“Tomorrow,” she says. “Now close your eyes and go back to sleep.”

And I do.

In the morning of course I have to bike to the beach for more sea water for the barnacles because Mom drank my back-up supply. I guess this will have to be a daily exercise since I can't store the water in the refrigerator, which will be inconvenient but will also show them how responsible I am. And besides, it's only five minutes each way.

I leave a note for them on the counter to make sure they get the point:
I have gone to the beach for water for my pet barnacles. I will be careful of the traffic. I will be home for breakfast. Love, Sylvia.
I put in the bit about the traffic so they understand that I am taking some risks which I would not have to take if they let Grandpa buy me a horse because I wouldn't have to ride my bike on the busy road by the breakwater.

When I return home they're still in bed. I leave the note on the counter anyway, and change the water for the barnacles. I watch their tentacles come out and kick food into their houses, and that's when I recall the visit from Kansas.

Wow. That was really something. She was in my room. I felt her holding my foot. I flex my foot inside my shoe and remember the sensation.

I realize I'm not scared of evil spirits any more, though I'm not exactly in a hurry to go back and play wee-gee with Taylor. Today I have to find my way to Kansas's place.

I eat two pieces of toast with thick layers of protein-rich peanut butter. Mom and Dad are still not up. I decide to make them breakfast in bed.

“What's this, Pumpkin?” says Mom when I bring in the tray.

“French toast. Your favourite.”

Dad moans into his pillow, then rubs his eyes and says, “Good morning, Shorty.”

“You shouldn't call her that,” says Mom.

“I have to call her something from one of the food groups, is that it?” says Dad.

Perhaps this wasn't the best idea.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” says Mom.

“All your nicknames for her are edible,” says Dad, which is perfectly true but I don't mind.

“They are not,” says Mom.

“How about I make you both some tea?” I say.

“That would be lovely, Honey,” says Mom.

“See?” says Dad.

“Or coffee. I'm not sure how you make it, but I can try,” I say.

Dad carves off a forkful of toast and swabs it in the maple syrup. “This looks delicious.”

“It sure is,” says Mom, nibbling on a bit of crust she's pulled off with her fingertips.

“I'm wondering if I can go off on my bike for a while.”

“Need to get some more purgative?” says Dad, then coughs.

Mom has picked up her fork but stops with it poised halfway to her plate. She looks for a minute like she might stab Dad with it instead. She turns to me and says, “He's making a little joke about your salt water.”

“She was probably hoping that wouldn't come up again,” says Dad.

And Mom laughs. So I see everything's all right.

“I'm going to meet a friend,” I say.

“Someone from school?” says Mom.

I think about that. Kansas is someone from on the way to school, which is not exactly the same as someone from school, but it's pretty close. I tell her yes.

“Well that's fine with me,” says Dad. “Cause I think I'm going to have to lie down for a while after this breakfast. How about you, Evie?”

And they let me go, as long as I promise to be back for lunch.