Born Weird (2 page)

“That’s an awful lot of text,” said a male voice. It came from the speaker in the telephone.

“Then make the letters small,” Grandmother Weird said. She rolled her eyes. She saw Angie. She looked back at the telephone.

“No name? No date?” the speakerphone voice asked.

“Neither.”

“It’ll still be really small.”

“I’ll need it in thirteen days,” Grandmother Weird said. She reached out her tiny arm. She jabbed her index finger to the telephone, ending the call. Shuffling her body back into the middle of the bed she looked her granddaughter over.

“Does it have a father?” Grandmother Weird asked.

“Are you asking if this is the child of God?”

“How far along?”

“They looked at me funny in the airport.”

“But no ring …”

“Who am I to go against family tradition?” Angie asked. Grandmother Weird issued a small laugh. She hadn’t been married when she’d given birth to her only son, Besnard, Angie’s father. The laugh made Angie feel slightly safer. She attempted to sit on the corner of the bed. The mattress sagged. She slid off. She attempted this several more times. Then she noticed the chair in the corner. Pushing it towards the bed, Angie sat down.

“Are you done?”

“Yes.”

“No more wiggling?”

“Nope.”

“Okay then,” Grandmother said. She smoothed the wrinkles from the sheet. “I’m dying.”

“Again?”

“I will die at 7:39 p.m. on April 20. Not a second later or a moment earlier.”

“Who doesn’t love a countdown?”

“Thirteen days from today.”

“Is there something special about that day?”

“It’s my birthday. I guess it slipped your memory?”

“Death’s not much of a party.”

“I’ve asked you to come here because there are mistakes I’ve made. Mistakes I need your help correcting.”

“I plan on living until I’m at least a hundred. Maybe older.”

“Be quiet, Angelika!”

Grandmother Weird said these words in what Angie and her siblings called
the Tone
. They each had a pet theory to explain why it was so effective. Kent’s was that her voice became all bass. Abba thought it was the way she stressed each word, making them all sound capitalized. Lucy’s explanation was that her lung capacity allowed her to push out twice as much air; therefore her words came out twice as strongly. Angie liked all of these, but she felt that only Richard had gotten it right. His explanation was that she stripped all emotion from her voice, leaving only her harsh judgment.

However it worked, it made Angie comply. She sat still. She folded her hands in her lap. Grandmother Weird didn’t speak and more than a minute passed.

“You’ve always been impatient,” Grandmother Weird finally said. “Do you know that you were born in a hallway?”

“How could I forget?”

“You almost died in that hallway.”

“Yup.”

“With the cord wrapped so tight around your little throat.”

“Crazy,” Angie said. She’d stopped paying attention to her grandmother. The thought of giving birth in a hallway was so terrifying that she’d begun conjuring the scene in her
mind, replaying it over and over. This was the way Angie often dealt with events she feared would happen.

“That’s why I gave it to you,” Grandmother Weird said.

“Of course.”

“The power to forgive.”

“I know. Wait. Gave me what?”

“It was your father’s fault. That idiotic car. Whoever heard of driving a Maserati in the city? I knew it would define you.”

“The car?”

“I knew you’d spend your whole life having to find it in yourself to forgive your parents for almost killing you before you were even born. With your very first breath you needed the power to forgive. It’s odd because forgiveness is not something I’m particularly good at. I didn’t even know I had it in me.”

“What are we talking about?”

“The ability to forgive!”

“… ”

“It’s my heart,” Grandmother Weird said. “My goddamn elephant heart.”

Grandmother Weird’s heart, while much smaller than an elephant’s,
was
unnaturally large. The average human heart weighs between 250 and 350 grams and is about the size of a fist. The weight of Annie Weird’s heart pushed 600 grams and it was the size of two fists together. She was convinced that its exaggerated dimensions were the source of all the
drama that had ever befallen her. And she was well aware that Angie was her only grandchild who’d inherited this condition. Angie’s heart was even slightly bigger than her own.

“I held you in my arms,” Grandmother Weird continued. “I looked down and it came from me and tumbled into you. I gave to you the power to forgive anyone, anytime.”

Angie looked down at Grandmother Weird. She saw how loosely her rings fit on her fingers, the tremor in her right hand and the droop in her eyelids. “That’s so … it’s … it’s r … really b … eautiful,” Angie said. She’d started to cry.

“Maybe I should have given you the power not to be such a crybaby sap,” Grandmother Weird said.

Angie had a deserved reputation as the family’s crybaby. Yet her grandmother’s comment stung. “Couldn’t it have been invisibility?” Angie asked, her tears ceasing, instantly. “Flight maybe? Something a little more useful?”

“You came out bright red. Not very attractive, I’m afraid. Like a boiled lobster!”

“Super-speed?”

“All of you got one, you know. All five of you got one.”

“You gave Kent the power to be an asshole?”

“Yes. In a way I did. Kent is slightly stronger than anyone he fights. Physical fights, I mean. He came out so small and I knew he’d need to defend himself, somehow. That he’s emotionally stunted is not my fault.”

“He’s not stunted. He’s just angry all the time.”

“Lucy is never lost. Abba never loses hope. Richard keeps
himself safe. I never thought they’d all become curses. They were supposed to be blessings. I didn’t know that they’d end up ruining your lives.”

“Our lives are ruined?”

“And it’s not just you kids. It’s the family. The family name! I will not go to the grave responsible for taking down the good name of the Weirds.”

“Oh yes. Well, then, that makes more sense.”

“That’s why you’re here, Angie. You must go and find them. Round all of them up and bring them here. All five of you must be in this room at 7:39 p.m. on April 20 precisely. At the moment of my death I will lift the curses.”

“Can’t you just lift mine now? If it’s a curse, the sooner the better, no?”

“Again with the sass! Angie, I have no control over these things. I didn’t consciously bestow these abilities. I can’t consciously remove them. I just know that at the moment of my death, when my heart is confronted with a now or never situation, it will see the damage these curses have inflicted and take them away.”

“I see,” Angie said. She looked down at her belly. She put both of her hands on the arms of her chair and stood. A blue plastic pitcher sat beside the phone on the bedside table. She filled a Styrofoam cup with water and took a drink.

“Did you hear me?” Grandmother Weird asked.

“Even the water smells like pine.”

“Look at me.”

“Hmmm?”

“You think I’ve lost my mind.”

“No. Not at all. It’s just big. Big news. I just need some time to absorb it, that’s all.”

“I see. Perhaps a demonstration then?”

“Not necessary.”

“There’s a marker in there,” Grandmother Weird said, pointing to the drawer in the bedside table. “Could you get it for me?”

Angie opened the drawer. She searched through it. Beneath several celebrity gossip magazines Angie found a black felt-tipped Magic Marker. She handed it over to her. Grandmother Weird took the cap off with her teeth and spit it out, sending it sailing through the air.

The instant the cap hit the floor, every light in the room dimmed by half. The television sets lost reception. Angie felt her grandmother’s cold, bony fingers encircle her wrist. She tried to pull away but the old woman’s grip was incredibly strong and she could not break it.

“Watch the little old ladies,” Grandmother said.

Angie looked up. The elderly woman closest to the window fell backwards, as if she’d been deboned. The machine beside that bed made a high-pitched whine. Grandmother Weird pressed the Magic Marker against the skin of Angie’s forearm and began to write. The lights dimmed further. The white-haired woman in the next bed collapsed. A second machine began making the high-pitched whine. A nurse ran
into the room. Angie tried again to pry her grandmother’s fingers away. She still couldn’t. Grandmother Weird wrote a series of numbers on Angie’s skin. The lady in the bed closest fell backwards. A third machine whined. More nurses ran into the room.

“Stop it!” Angie yelled. “Stop this right now!”

Her grandmother did not look up. She wrote the last number of a ten-digit sequence. Then she let go of Angie’s wrist. The lights returned to full-strength. The televisions regained reception. The machines stopped making their high-pitched whines. The elderly women sat upright in their beds and looked around the room, dazed and frightened.

“Never doubt your elders, child.”

“Shark!” Angie yelled. She began to back out of Room 4-206. “You will never hold my baby. You will never see me again.”

“Yes I will,” Grandmother Weird said. She smiled broadly. She began to laugh. She laughed in
the Tone
.

Angie backed out into the hallway. Holding her belly she ran as fast as she could. She did not look back. By the time she’d reached the elevators, Angie had already forgiven her grandmother.

N
INETY MINUTES AFTER FLEEING
her grandmother’s hospital room Angie was scrubbing her forearm at a sink in the women’s washroom on the departures level of the Vancouver International Airport. She’d rebooked her flight from the back of the taxi she’d taken from the hospital. The only other woman in the bathroom stood at the hand dryer. Her pantsuit was unwrinkled. The diamonds in her ears shone. She pretended not to stare at Angie. Then the dryer shut off and she gave Angie a gentle look as she walked confidently away on her strappy high heels.

Angie looked in the mirror. The front of her white blouse was soaked. Her belly button bulged through the cotton. The ten-digit number remained perfectly legible on her red forearm. When she heard the final boarding call for flight AC117 from Vancouver to New York City, Angie turned off the tap, headed to the gate and boarded the plane.

At row 18 a large man was sitting in the aisle seat. A third of him spilt over the chair. His right arm had already claimed
the middle armrest. He did not look up as Angie pushed her purse into the overhead compartment. She stood for several moments before he moved into the aisle and then she wedged herself into the window seat.

Her revenge was how often she had to pee.

Angie made her first trip to the bathroom shortly after takeoff. Her second was twenty minutes later. When she returned from her third visit, the large man had moved to the window.

“Touché,” he said as Angie lowered herself into the aisle seat.

“Thank you,” she replied.

An hour and forty minutes later Angie was in the washroom for the sixth time when the plane began to plummet. She grabbed the faucet with her left hand, cradled her belly with her right and pushed her bum against the door. Water splashed onto the front of her shirt, soaking it once more. She immediately realized that Veronica was a stupid, stupid name. She made a promise to both God and her unborn daughter to find a better one, should they survive.

The dive lasted three long seconds. When the plane levelled off Angie ran back to her seat. She fastened her seat belt, tightly. The large man beside her opened the plastic window shade. They both squinted. When their eyes had adjusted to the light they saw thick black smoke billowing from the plane’s far right engine.

“I wouldn’t worry. There are three others,” the man sitting beside her said. Then he wiggled into his chair, folded his hands over his chest and closed his eyes.

“Good afternoon,” said an authoritative voice from the speaker over top of Angie’s head. “This is your captain. Yes. We’re experiencing some … minor … technical difficulties. Nothing to worry about, folks. But we’re going to have to make an unscheduled stop. We should be landing in the … at the … Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport in about fifteen, seventeen minutes. We … ah … apologize for the inconvenience. We’ll be all right.”

It was the
we’ll be all right
that started the panic. There was a collective gasp. Angie’s breathing became shallow. Superstition took over and she began to believe that if she could just decide on the perfect name they really would be
all right
. Sarah, Rachael, Jenny, Candi, she thought, desperately. “Vanessa, Abigail, Helen, Franny,” she said out loud. Then the pressure overwhelmed her imagination and all she could come up with were random nouns. “Celery, Oboe, Loofah,” she muttered. “Garamond, Decanter, Frizzante, Pilates. Rolex, Evian, Dasani, Perriella.”

The plane began its descent, which was steep. It dipped forwards. It wobbled to the left and the right. Angie used both of her hands to clutch the armrest as she became convinced that they were all going to die a horrible fiery death.