Girl in Shades (21 page)

When the apartment is dark for the first time, I wake to hear Buffy's voice swelling up through the blackness. The words sound as if they are being spoken from the end of a long copper tunnel, sentences jagged and illogical. Lying still in my couch-bed, I soon realize that the incoherent sounds I hear are not from her mouth, but are her thoughts, her mind, echoing out from inside her head.

They must be the dialogue of her dreams.

I have never heard someone's thoughts when they were sleeping. Maybe it is because the apartment is so small, and Buffy is in her bed just down the hall. Either way, her internal wisdom comforts me.

“Resistance shatters” are the first words I hear. And then, “Nature lives in silent moments. Touch the ground. Try to feel the sky, because it is you. Eat vegetables whenever you can.”

When I focus on them, Buffy's words drown out my own worries regarding my mother's notebook (which is stuffed under the velvet couch until I am ready to read the rest) and the other upsetting things that circulate themselves through my mind: my mother's face when they closed her coffin, my father crying, ladies surrounding a teepee with candles, Elijah scowling at his mother, being sick in an empty house.

Buffy's mind continues to ramble incoherently. “Peace out, peace in, peace everywhere. Always wipe from front to back.” Eventually, the rhythm of the strange syllables soothes me into sleep.

Leah comes back at 3 a.m. I can tell by the clock on the bookcase. I close my eyes when she shuts the door and pretend to be sleeping while she slinks across the floor to her bedroom.

I don't smell any perfume.

November 29, 1972

The last two days I have spent in bed. Thinking, crying, swearing. I can't bear to smell myself — primordial rot — I need to take a shower before maggots start growing in my armpits. I'm completely tattered.

He's gone. Amar. He took me and now he's gone.

What an incredible phony he was. But I liked him. Loved him?

I am thinking (as I lie here) about how good it felt when I fell asleep in his arms. On that tacky sofa inside that cabin. It's embarrassing now to think, but I imagined us falling asleep like that forever. Except in a nicer room — a master bedroom. He was so smart. Maybe too smart: he figured out how to trick me into getting close to him, naked in the snow. Into thinking he wasn't just a stripped down, fancy-talking Casanova.

I miss him.

I have spoken to Steven once on the phone. Yesterday. I told him nothing was wrong and that I have merely come down with a flu-type thing that has confined me to my bed. And that no, I do not want any company because I am afraid I may be contagious. And what I have, he doesn't want to catch.

He wants to talk. About the other night when we were supposed to go to Roland's together. About the hours I went missing. About my mother crying when she answered the phone. I told him that talk was overrated. That I'll talk to him when I'm ready.

November 30, 1972

They both showed up in my bedroom last night, Amar in my dream when I was napping, feeding me grapes from his fingertips, and Steven, in the flesh, standing at the end of my bed after walking right into my house and slamming the door to my bedroom open. He has nerve, I tell you.

What's going on? he asked. His eyes were wide and intense, like he was trying to trap me inside them.

Steven, I'm practically buck naked, I said, pulling my comforter up to hide my nightgown.

Oh sorry. He turned around while I slipped a Trent sweatshirt over my matted hair.

So what was it you were saying, Steven?

I said, what's going on? I want to know. All of it.

Nothing's going on, Steven. I told you I have the flu.

Bullshit!

Steven, quiet, my mother is down the hall. I'll tell you if you sit down first. He sat on the corner of the bed. I noticed that he had taken off his shoes before coming in the house and that his socks were bleached white (by his mother, I'm sure).

Tell me, he said again, his voice shaking like a thin branch in the wind.

Steven, I don't have the flu.

What's wrong then?

I'm just stressed out from school.

I don't believe you. Tell me now or I'll leave here and you'll never see me again.

His threat was so dramatic that it scared me. Not that I was scared to be without him, but I think I was just scared to be without anyone. So, before I could stop myself, I started to tell him. The other night, when we were supposed to go out to dinner and . . .

Go on.

The other night, I wasn't there when you came to pick me up because I went out with another man.

What?! He stood up then, with his fingertips on his temples like someone had just screamed fire.

Steven, sit down. (He did.) I'm sorry but I didn't know what else to do.

What do you mean?

There has been this weird sort of distance between us. For the longest time now, it's just not like it was when we first started going out.

You should have talked to me about it. (His voice quivered when he said it.) I don't want to lose you, Marigold.

You haven't lost me, Steven. I'm still here.

I took his hand and looked in his eyes, trying to mean it, and before I knew it, I felt the tears forming a blockage in my throat. Must swallow, I thought.

Oh, Marigold, he said. We'll get through this. (He hugged me. I have to say, he looked decent.)

I grabbed on to him because he was all I had.

Oh, Steven, I'm sorry. (I
am
sorry, in a way.)

Mari, you just have to tell me one thing. I don't care who he is, or why, I just want to know, is it over between you?

Yes, I said. (This I knew for sure.) Yes, it's all over. I started to cry even harder after saying this.

Good, now we can start over.

I'm sorry, Steven.

We rocked back and forth as we held each other, an innocent sort of rock, like two friends greeting each other after being away all summer. Only it's almost December.

And now he's gone home. And I'm alone again, still in bed. I'm starting to think about washing myself — getting rid of the last of Amar living inside me — starting over.

I will do it as soon as I can shove the rest of this guilt down my throat.

December 14, 1972

I've showered and started going to my classes again. I've got a final exam in five days that I need to prepare for, and a paper I need to write on Jane Austen and the complexity of relationships in
Sense and Sensibility
.

I'll show her complex relationships.

Steven held my hand today in the Student Centre. Something about it felt safe and maybe like I could stop worrying about whether Amar was ever going to come back. Like maybe I could just be happy.

All this time pretending to have the flu and I think I have created it for myself. I feel like crap. This morning I had to leave class to go sit on the toilet. Disgusting. I have a cold cloth on my temple right now, but I don't think I have a fever. I'm sure this will pass, like all things.

Steven wants to know where I got the butterfly bracelets I'm wearing. I told him I'd had them forever.

December 19, 1972

The very worst thing that could have happened — has just happened. I came back today from writing my exam, tired, of course, and not wanting to deal with any more shit, and what do I find? Mother. Sitting at the kitchen table with her forehead resting on the palms of her hands.

She had just cooked a plate of chocolate fudge, and the sweetness in the air made it seem insane that she would be upset about anything.

Then I saw it.

My notebook (this one) was sitting on the table in front of her. Closed, but I knew it had not always been. She looked up at me like I had just been given a death sentence, her face red and blotchy from where her hands had been pushing.

Marigold, how could you? She sung the words like a sad song and I freaked.

What the hell are you doing?! I reached for my notebook and she grabbed it in her hands. I had to dig my fingernails into the fleshy part beside her thumb to get her to loosen her grip. This is none of your business! I yelled at her.

Marigold, you have brought great shame on your family.

Fuck you.

I am glad your father is not alive to see this.

I took my book and went to my room. Why did she have to bring up Dad? It's not like he chose to get cancer. I'm sure if he had a choice he would have chosen to be here to see this. He would have chosen to be here with me, instead of wherever the hell he is now.

We haven't spoken all night, Mother and I. And we probably never will.

December 22, 1972

I've started throwing up in the mornings. Not a lot, just enough to fill the base of the sink after I brush my teeth. I don't think Mother has heard me, and even if she did, she would probably not ask me why or try to help me. I swear to God she has disowned me. Nothing I could do could make her forgive me. She cries while she dusts the television.

I'm pretty sure I'm pregnant. I feel this vague blob of sickness in me all day long, and it's not just from the heartache of losing the only guy who has every really moved me to my core.

I'm only a week late but I can feel Amar growing inside me, the part of him he left. And I wonder if he can feel it too? Does he know he can never escape it, or me? We will always be tied now, which feels quite nice actually — like he's still here.

December 23, 1972

Christmas depresses me. I don't know why Mother even bothers putting up a tree, it's not like we're going to celebrate anything — not with Dad gone only three years and things the way they are.

I went to the doctor yesterday, the clinic on George Street. I know it's early but I have to know for sure.

I'm twenty, I told the nurse.

No, I'm not married, Doctor Whatever-the-hell-your-name-is.

I winced when they drew the blood, like I was losing pieces of him, or showing him to the world.

I have been thinking a lot about the things he said that night. About life and happiness and all that shit. I think there might be something to it all. I'm going to try reading the
Bhagavad Gita
he gave me. I think if I can figure it out, I can figure him out. And that makes me feel like he is still here. I want to keep searching like he said, make sense of it all. I want to find out how to be happy. I want to be a good person — the kind of person that doesn't sleep with someone she hardly knows.

They are calling me with the results tomorrow. How much you want to bet that Mother is the one to pick up the phone?

December 24, 1972

Christmas is cancelled. I made it to the phone on the first ring yesterday but Mother was standing right there and my face could not hide the shock of the truth.

It's true.

My eyes filled as soon as the nurse told me and I still can't figure out whether they were tears of joy or sadness. Could it be both? It's strangely comforting to have this little Amar growing inside me — a better souvenir of him than damn bracelets that's for sure.

So I hung up the phone and Mother asked me right away what was wrong.

Nothing, I told her. Nothing is wrong.

Why are you crying then? She was wearing yellow rubber gloves and scrubbing the kitchen sink with Javex.

I just found out some news is all. I felt my knees give out then and I started to sink towards the ground.

Then she started to lecture me: Marigold, you tell me right this instance what is going on. Is it that coloured man? Are you still seeing him? What about Steven, Marigold? Steven is a perfectly lovely young man and if you ask me (I didn't), he would make you very, very happy. And happiness is not something that the good Lord gives to everyone. In fact, I don't think you even deserve it anymore . . . there was a time, yes, but now, with all the carrying on you have been doing, why, I think you deserve something much worse. I don't want to say hell, but maybe something close. Maybe something almost as uncomfortable as hell, maybe some place like that would suit you —

I'm pregnant, okay.

Her yellow hands froze in the air by her face, like some sort of screwed-up flower with rubber petals.

Excuse me? She stretched the two words out as long as possible to delay the time before I had to say it again.

I'm pregnant, and it's the coloured man's baby.

After this, hell truly did break loose. Panting and pacing and wailing (all from Mother). Things were thrown, pans, a casserole dish, the kitchen clock, potatoes from a bowl. I got through it all without crying, the only part of me showing my fear was my hands, which were twitching. I left through the back door and went to the only place I could think of. I went to Steven's house.

When I knocked on the front door, Steven's mother and father were sitting in the living room watching
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
in the dark. Through their picture window, I could see their faces reflecting the dancing colour from the television set.

Why, Marigold darling, what a nice surprise, his mother said when she pushed the door open. She flipped on the light to reveal a foyer of cardboard boxes that made me remember — Steven's parents are moving out to PEI next week. Mr. Devine is retiring from the police force and they have bought a house on the ocean. Steven is moving into campus residence.

Is Steven here, Mrs. Devine?

Yes, he's here, upstairs studying. Mrs. Devine's chestnut hair was pulled back off her tired face into a bun. Her blue eyes were calm.

Can I go up?

You go right ahead. Nice to see you, Marigold.

She sat back down beside Mr. Devine in the darkened living room lit up by the flashing colour from their television. I pounded up the stairs. I opened his door and saw him there, at his desk, pen in hand, looking into his wall like he was trying to remember something important.

Steven! I ran to him and put my arms around him from behind. Steven, I said again, softer this time.

Marigold, what happened? he asked. He turned around in his seat and hugged me and that was when I started to cry.

Steven, I love you.

I love you too, Mari. You know that.

How much do you love me, Steven?

As much as there ever was or ever will be.

Steven, I messed up.

Whatever it is, Mari, it's okay. I'm here.

Are you sure? He nodded and I exploded.

I let it go too far with that other man, Steven. I got stoned. And we had sex with each other. He released his hug on me and instead gripped me by the shoulders.

What? he said with his eyebrows scrunching together.

I'm going to have a baby, Steven. I'm having another man's baby and I need your help. I need you to be here for me.

Steven said nothing. In my mind he said, Of course I will be here for you, Mari, we all make mistakes. But out loud he said nothing, only looked down at the floor like a wounded deer.

After three minutes he spoke: I think you should go.

But Steven, I can't go home now. My mother found out and she is furious.

You have to go now, Mari. I can't talk about this yet.

He walked me downstairs and we stood at the door for a second.

Marigold! Steven's younger sister, Leah, ran at me and attached herself around my legs.

Hi Leah. Leah, I have to go now. Leah, you'll have to let me go now.

But I don't want you to go, let's go play, she said, her bottom lip jutting out, her pudgy hands grabbing the backs of my knees.

No, I'm going now, Leah. Sorry.