Mud Girl (19 page)

“You can think about it, if you…” she says, but Abi cuts her off.

“I'll do it,” she says.

Amanda exhales. “Good,” she says. “I'll pick you up Monday at nine.” She pauses. “How is everything?”

That word
everything
is like another hand at Abi's belly. Instantly, it's all aflutter and then crumbly.

“Abi?” comes Amanda's voice.

“Everything's fine.” Her voice flutes.

“Hmm,” she says. “How about I swing by after I finish this next house?”

“If you want,” Abi says, and Amanda flares.

“Say it, Abi! Say what you want!”

All this time Abi's been feeling that sense of spiralling, down-pulling, but Amanda's words pull her up. She's stopped with a realization: it's never been
Amanda
she's disliked. It's this: her way of pushing Abi, prodding her, that Abi's not liked. Yes, she's succeeded – at least for the moment – in halting that sense of inevitability – but now there's a crumbling in Abi that makes her feel uncertain.

“Sure – come,” Abi manages to say. Amanda seems to be waiting for something, though – something more convincing.
But how can Abi tell her that she wants her for more than just to come over with a sandwich? Abi wants Amanda to tell her things. She has questions for Amanda. She wants to ask her what it's like to let a boy inside you. Even though Jude said she has had no boyfriends, Abi has a feeling that Amanda knows all about it. Maybe even more than Jude knows.

“Yeah, come after work.” Abi tries to muster some warmth in her words.

“I'll be there at half past six. I'll bring a sub. What does your dad like on a sandwich?”

So everybody's noticed Dad. “Anything,” Abi says.

“It'll be something good.” Amanda hangs up.

There are other things that Abi would like to tell her. About Mum. About her fears of leaving Dad. Ending up somewhere she doesn't want to end up. But how can she put words to these thoughts? What words?

A
bi finishes the body of the sweater, casting off two-bytwo until the last six stitches. She checks through the book to remind herself how to cast off, and does it. She's glad Ernestine insisted on showing her how to do back and front together, because now there are only the sleeves left to do. Hadn't Ernestine said something about showing her how to do both of those together too? But then what's the rush? Abi
tries to cast on. Tries again, several times, but there's something twisting and wrong about it, and terribly uneven. She pulls it off again, tries once more. Gives up. The body piece is quite good though, with even stitches. Would fit a very large doll, like the one Abi had when she was a little child. She took it everywhere when she was four; it was almost her size. Had it out back one day, on the wharf, and it fell into the river. Mum stopped taking her to the beach that year because she spent all her time looking to see if the doll had washed ashore. Mum had always said that things dropped in the river always came ashore. She stopped saying that after the doll.

D
ad does look at the sandwich as Amanda sets it down beside him, but makes no move to eat it. Amanda looks out the window and then suggests she and Abi sit out back.

“Ever grown anything in that?” She motions to the greenhouse.

“That was my mother's. She was always trying to grow tomatoes in it.”

Amanda passes Abi a sandwich. Thick cheese bread, garlic beef. Heavy slices of red tomato.

“Where's your mother now?”

“I don't know.”

“I'm sorry.” Amanda stares at Abi, her forehead wrinkled.

“She left a year ago.”

Amanda pulls her shoes off, and puts her feet into the water. The current pulls at them, pushes them west.

“You haven't heard from her?”

“Not a word.”

“I don't understand that,” says Amanda.

There's a sudden loosening in Abi's chest. “I don't understand it either.”

“And I don't understand that.” Amanda motions back to the house. Abi knows she means Dad.

Abi just shakes her head.

Amanda knows when to stop. And she doesn't ask about Jude, at least, not directly. She says: “My brother's having a barbecue tomorrow. Do you want to come? I could pick you up in the afternoon.”

Abi knows there is a challenge in her words, and it is: “Don't tell me you've got plans with that Jude because I know you don't. So…say yes to my invitation, and if he asks you later…well, snooze-you-lose, tell him!” Something like that.

Abi knows that Amanda won't let her say no. And – truth is – she doesn't really want to say no.

Still. Some part of Abi wishes that Jude didn't always leave things to the last minute. Or even until the next day

“Sure – pick me up,” Abi says. Amanda's chin seems to tilt up a bit. Abi tries not to let the minor sign of victory bother
her. It's not fair: a new friend, a boyfriend, and they don't like each other. It gives her the same sort of feeling she has about having two parents, one in a chair, and one who-knows.

“Will your Mum-and-Dad be there?”

“Oh yeah,” says Amanda easily, “Dad'll be throwing hamburgs around – as he calls them! – and Mum'll be zapping mosquitoes and flies with her new electric bug killer. I'm not sure what's worse: the contraption itself, or the kick she gets from using it. The bugs positively sizzle, and I swear smoke curls up from their poor little carcasses.” Amanda is laughing, even though she shakes her head. “She does rescue spiders, though – even the big furry ones – and returns them to the out-of-doors. Of course, they might die of starvation if she continues to kill off their food source!”

After she leaves, Abi tries to put together a picture of Amanda's family: bug-zapping mother, hamburg-throwing father, university brother, and Amanda, with her robot arm. At the moment, it's more of a collage than a picture. But that'll change when she sees them all together, she's sure of it. Then they'll be a picture.

A
bi takes the bus to the drugstore, and finds the aisle marked “fem. hygiene.” Yes, the birth control is in this aisle too. So are the pregnancy tests in their bright pink and
blue packaging. She tries to remember what they said in school. Condoms have to be used with something else, otherwise they're not enough. Spermicide. Can't imagine asking – no, telling – Jude about this. “Here, put one of these on.” Abi thinks of Amanda's voice, and can hear her new friend in her head:
snooze-you-lose
, she'd said. What would she say about this?
Wear-it-or-forget-it-baby!

Abi remembers overhearing a conversation in the gym washroom, one girl saying to another,
I told him: you wear a raincoat, or we're not going out to play!

Was making love supposed to be about threats?

There's a square box with a pretty picture. “Feminine condom” it says. Rate of effectiveness: 92%.

There's a woman standing next to Abi now. Abi tries not to watch her, in the hopes that the woman is not watching her. But still, she sees the woman's hand moving up to a slim box. “Personal lubricant.”

What?

It's as if she hears the question. She turns to Abi. “You doin' okay here? Need any help?”

The expression on her face is open, kind. Her hair is cartoon red. She's not a hidey kind of person.

“No – I'm fine. Just need some of…these.” Abi grabs the pink box of condoms.

“Well, they're not much good without this,” says the
woman evenly, and hands her another slim box, this one of spermicide.

“Right,” Abi manages to say, and she's away down the aisle toward the checkout. At the checkout, she opens her wallet.

“We don't take cheques without identification,” says the clerk.

“Identification?”

“Driver's license, credit card. You know.”

Abi shakes her head, and the clerk sweeps the two boxes under the counter. “There's a bank machine just down the street,” she says. The man behind Abi harrumphs.

“But,” she starts to say.

“I'll keep it here at the counter for you,” the clerk says, and she pulls back a piece of hair that is not long enough for her ponytail, not short enough to stay out of her eyes. Abi doesn't bother telling her that she doesn't have a bank card yet. The impatient man is now plunking his purchases down on the counter. Abi flees.

Blackberry Tears

J
ude hasn't called by three o'clock when Amanda picks up Abi. The Dodge rattle calls her to the door. “Sounds as if someone forgot to finish putting the engine together before they plopped it into the van.”

Amanda laughs her round laugh. “Yup – exactly what it sounds like! Maybe they did!”

This time the puppy, Mortimer, is with her. He has an oversized pillow in the back of the van, a space hollowed out in the centre of it. He wiggles and yips as Abi climbs in. She's happy to see him. Already he's bigger than he was the first time she saw him. He gnaws the side of her hand with his sharp puppy teeth.

Amanda drives through the town, past the two grocery stores, one on either side of the main street, each flanked by
a string of stores. She drives on, past the high school, the library, on to where the road meets up again with the river, now a little closer to where it joins the ocean. “You ever go to the marsh?” Amanda asks.

“The marsh?”

“Yeah,” says Amanda. “There's a baby salt marsh out here, at the end of the dike.”

“A baby marsh?”

“Just forming. Something my geography teacher went on and on about last year. She dragged us all down there to show us birds and poisonous plants.”

“Things living in river mud, you mean?”

“Pretty amazing what lives down here, really.” Amanda pulls into the driveway of a small rancher.

The front yard is square and surrounded by a wide planter-fence. That is, an almost waist-high planter, about seventy centimeters wide, made of wood fence slats. The planter goes all around the outer edges of the front yard, and the ground in the middle is covered in smooth flag-stones. There is a curving concrete ramp that leads to the front door.

Abi climbs out of the van and pushes through the gate for a closer look. The plants are amazing; she's not at all sure she knows the names of any of them. Everything is golden and red, green, silver, and white, and very fragrant.

In the middle of all this, is a pond, the sides of which are the same height as the planter's. The pond is filled with lilies, and as Abi goes closer, all at once water begins shooting out of a fountain. She turns to see how this has happened, just as the door bursts open and a woman with long and wild black hair comes rolling toward her down the ramp, like some crazed skater kid.

“You're Abi!” she cries out, and Abi wonders if she can possibly stop her wheelchair in time before she sends herself hurtling into the pond. She does, and grabs Abi's hand.

“You!” she repeats, “are Abi. I'm so pleased to meet you. I'm Bobbie,” she adds with a laugh. She waves her long arms around. “You're admiring my garden!”

It makes sense then. It's an accessible garden. Even the lilies in the pond can be tended from Bobbie's chair.

“My koi – the fish. Have you seen them? Tom, Dick, and Harry. I had them for three years before I realized they're all male.”

In the heat of the afternoon, the fish are deep in the pond, trying to hide in the shade of the lily pads. Abi bends over the water and can just see flecks of gold and cream as they move lazily from her shadow.

“You both might want to go round to the backyard and join Jon and his pals.”

Amanda leans over and kisses her mother's head, and her mum hands her a long bright scarf, which Amanda takes and
ties loosely around that full crinkly hair. It's amazing, really; a person would be more likely to be caught staring at that hair than at Bobbie's chair. Her smile would be enough to distract from anything, Abi thinks, with those cheeks as round as Amanda's.

Bobbie's eyes twinkle as she says, “There are some rather nice-looking boys back there.” She motions behind the house. “Just generally
nice
, too,” she adds. She looks at Abi and lowers her voice. “That's Manda's thing, you know: they have to be
nice
.” She mimics: “‘But is he
nice
, Mum, is he
nice
?' Surely, she is the only nineteen-year-old to say such a thing!” Even though Bobbie's words are mocking, there's no mistaking the pride in her look toward her daughter.

Amanda grumbles. “Maybe that's why I never have a boyfriend, though, eh Mum?”

“Oh, go round back!” her mother commands.

So they do. The back deck is big, full of more bright plants in big, tall pots, and there's a built-in brick barbecue, a fireplace, really. Out in the yard – a quarter-acre of grass is what it looks like – there's a three-on-three volleyball thing happening. Behind the property is farmland.