We Are Water (17 page)

Albie’s face is flushed and it doesn’t help that he’s got this naughty boy grin on his face. “The usual way,” he says. “Male plus female equals baby.”

Winona reaches over and backhands him. “Don’t you
dare
give me that wiseguy attitude at a time like this!” she yells. At first I think he might stomp on
her
foot or something, but Albie just reaches for the Oreos. Winona tells him he has to marry me now because it’s the only decent thing to do. “But I guess I better say good-bye to that beautiful church wedding that I’ve always dreamed about for my boy and his bride.” Those tears in her eyes are probably because the bride she’d been dreaming about is Althea, not me.

Albie makes the point, feebly, that he and I have other options.

“Like what?” Winona demands, and when he doesn’t answer her, she slams her coffee mug down against the table and says, “Just what do you think we are, Albert Wignall? Trailer trash? You’ve got obligations to this girl, and you’re damn well going to meet them. And if by ‘other options’ you mean what I think you do, then shame on you!”

“Yeah, but Mommy . . . ,” Albie says. He turns from his mother to his father. “Daddy, what do you think?”

Mr. Wignall looks back and forth between the two of them and takes his sweet time answering. “Your mother’s right,” he finally says. “You had your fun. Now you got to pay the piper.” At this meeting, I’m more or less being treated like I’m invisible. Why is that? I’m the one who’s pregnant. Don’t I count? What if
I
don’t want to marry
him
?

But in another two weeks now, I
will
marry Albie, not because I want to but because he’s 50 percent responsible for the baby that’s growing inside of me. No, more than that—75 percent maybe, him and his imaginary men’s pill that stops women from getting pregnant.

Albie doesn’t give me a ring; he gives me a hundred dollars and tells me to go down to Ogulnick’s Jewelers and pick out something I like. None of the diamond rings are anywhere near my price range, so I settle for this little ring with a garnet chip in it that’s really just a friendship ring, not an engagement ring. Winona says I shouldn’t wear it to work because my male customers will give me better tips if they don’t think I’m “spoken for.” Ha! Like
that’s
the reason she doesn’t want me wearing it, not because she’s embarrassed that Albie’s “knocked me up,” as he puts it.

When I finally call my brother to tell him about my situation, Donald says I don’t even sound like I
like
this guy. What am I marrying him for?”

“Because of the baby,” I tell him.

“And that’s the only reason?”

“Yeah. What other reason would there be?”

But after I get off the phone, I start thinking about it, and if I really,
really
want to be honest with myself, I think I’m partly marrying Albie because, even after all these years—twelve of them now—I still miss my own mother as bad as ever. Maybe Winona isn’t perfect—ha! no maybe about it!—but in under seven months she’s going to be my baby’s grandmother, so she might soften toward me and maybe even start treating me like a daughter a little bit. Who knows? Maybe next Easter, I’ll get an Easter basket like Albie.

My wedding dress is pastel orange with a matching headband. When Winona takes me shopping, she nixes my wearing white or wearing a veil, since Albie and I “jumped the gun” and conceived a child in sin. I have to oblige her because she’s paying for the dress, which she likes way more than I do. There’s no bridal shower, no fancy invitations. There’ll be no graduation this coming June for me, either; I dropped out of school when I started showing. No one from my foster family or my real family is coming to the wedding, not even Donald, who says he can’t in good conscience support this marriage. On Albie’s side, the only people who are coming are Albie’s parents—they’re going to be our witnesses—plus Winona’s mother, who’s always clacking her false teeth and telling me to call her by her first name, Bridey, and Mr. Wignall’s father, who has thick gray hair growing out of his ears and wears a hearing aid that’s always whistling. The only other person I wanted to invite is Priscilla from work. I’ve heard Winona tell Althea that she thinks Priscilla is “one of those girls who should have been born a boy,” by which she means, I think, that she’s a lesbian. Which she is. Priscilla’s not coming to my wedding, though, because I didn’t end up inviting her after Winona gave me this stupid excuse about how she doesn’t feel comfortable fraternizing with people who work under her. What she really meant, I’m pretty sure, is: no lesbians allowed. She’d probably croak if she knew about that afternoon when Priscilla drove me out to the place where she boards her horses, Lucky and Gal, and after we went horseback riding, we made out in the barn and her fingers gave me those “vaginal contractions” that it only dawned on me later was an orgasm—my first.

Even though we’re going to get married to prove we’re not “trailer trash,” as Winona puts it, Albie keeps talking about me getting an abortion. One of the other guys at Midas Mufflers and his girlfriend had “a little complication they had to take care of” a while back, he says, and Albie’s got the name of their doctor. But I am
not
getting an abortion, no matter that it’s legal now and no matter how much he keeps bugging me about it.

It doesn’t matter, though, because on the day we go to town hall for our marriage license they’re closed for lunch, and when we go back to Albie’s car to wait until one o’clock, I look down and there’s blood seeping through my white shorts. “Uh-oh,” I go.

“Jesus, what now?” Albie says, and I just point.

He drives me over to the emergency room and everyone there is real nice to me, real sensitive, even Albie. When I can’t stop crying and my little box of tissues runs out, he goes out to the nurses’ station and gets me a new box. And when we leave the hospital, he holds my hand on the way out to the car. Back at the Wignalls’, Winona holds out her arms and folds them around me and I cry against her shirt, partly because I’ve lost the baby and partly because this is the nicest she’s ever been to me. Don’t let go, I want to say. Please just keep holding me.

But Winona does let go, and in the days that follow I am both sad about losing the baby and relieved that now I don’t have to marry Albie after all. It’s like when you’re playing Monopoly and you pick up a get-out-of-jail-free card. I decide to get out of Sterling. My foster family’s away at the lake for the weekend. I can pack and leave them a note—tell them I decided it’s time for me to move on now that I’m almost an adult. And I can just not show up for my next shift at Friendly’s. I’ll just disappear.

I call Priscilla and she picks me up and drives us toward Hartford. On the way there, the car radio plays that Beatles song “Here Comes the Sun,” and she and I sing along with it.
Little darling, I feel the ice is slowly melting
. . . . In the motel room we rent on the Berlin Turnpike, Priscilla and I make fun of Winona, eat pizza, and drink beer. We get drunk and crazy, jumping on the two double beds, flying past each other in opposite directions until I flop facedown on the mattress and realize I’m still a little sore from my miscarriage. It was a silly way for me to behave, especially since I was almost a married woman and a mother. But I’m not either one of those things now, and so what? I’ve been on a starvation diet as far as fun’s concerned, and being free from Albie has made me giddy. I know that it’s only for this one night. Priscilla has to get back to her horses and her job. And I have to
not
go back to Sterling, or to the stupid clod I almost married. I still feel sad about the baby, but in a way it was for the best. If it had lived, I probably would have never gotten free of Albie and his parents, and even if I did, my baby’s last name would be Wignall. And my name, too. Annie
Wignall
: yuck! “Do me a favor, will you?” I ask Priscilla. “The next time he comes into Friendly’s and you make him a sundae, spit on it.” She kisses me and says it’ll be her pleasure, and that she’ll spit in his “fucking Fribble,” too.

Later, in the dark, Priscilla climbs into my bed and we start making out. She does the same kind of stuff she did to me that day in the horse barn and I like it and don’t even feel sore anymore. I do the same things to Priscilla, and I like doing that, too. But after we’re both finished, things get quiet. I can tell from her breathing that she’s fallen asleep and I get scared. Get up and go look out the window at the cars going by—the people inside them getting to wherever they’re going. And yeah, I’ve gotten away, but I have no idea where I’m going
to
. It’s like I’m a little girl again, in the backseat of that social worker’s car the day they came and got me. Drove me away from Daddy. I’m crying, looking out the back window at Kent, who’s running down the road after me. What Kent does to me is bad, but are these people bad, too? Where are they taking me? I don’t even care that my father’s drunk all the time. I just want to stay and live with him. And what about my brother? Donald’s at college and won’t even know where I’m going, where they’re taking me. . . .

I get back in bed. Reach over and touch Priscilla’s shoulder. Take her hand in mine. I keep holding on to it so that I’ll feel safe and be able to fall asleep. And after a while, it works. My panic fades away and I begin to doze. The next morning when I wake up, she’s still asleep. We’re still holding hands.

Priscilla buys us breakfast at a diner next door to the motel, but I can’t eat much. I have a stomachache. On our way out, she asks the cashier how to get to the bus station and then drives me over there. “Where to?” the ticket guy asks me. He waits. “Miss? You’re holding up the line.”

“Three Rivers,” I say. I’m not sure why I’m going back to where my family used to live—where the flood was—except that I have to go somewhere and it’s the only place I can think of. Priscilla gives me two twenties and a ten and says it’s not a loan, it’s a gift to help me start over until I can find a job. She waits with me until the bus comes, and when I get on it and the driver pulls away, Priscilla waves to me and I wave back. I’m crying, partly because I’ll miss her but also partly because I’m doing something daring and powerful. Something life-saving, even. I’ve gotten the hell away from Albie, and from his mean-ass mother, too, and that’s why I’m doing this. Later on during this bus ride, I realize it’s my birthday. I’m eighteen. Happy birthday to me.

Getting a pay-by-the-week room in Three Rivers is easy; I manage that in about an hour after I arrive. But getting a job is harder. There’s a Friendly’s on East Main Street, but when I go in there to fill out an application, the manager says he only wants experienced waitresses. That’s what I am, but it’s not like I can put down Winona Wignall as a reference. Shop Rite says they don’t need any grocery cashiers right now, but they’ll put my application on file and maybe call me in a month or so. A month? I can’t wait that long. My room costs forty dollars a week, and between the money Priscilla gave me and my own money, I only have thirty-three dollars left. And anyway, how are they supposed to call me when I’ve left the space for my phone number blank? A sign in the window of a dress shop says
SEAMSTRESS WANTED
. Too bad I can’t sew. I go to the library and read the want ads. Some business is looking for a typist. Too bad I can’t type. A drugstore wants a part-time clerk and delivery boy. Too bad I’m not a boy and don’t have my driver’s license. Two days later, there’s a new ad. A “café” called Electric Red is looking for dancers. Okay, I think, I can dance.

The catch is: you have to dance topless on a little stage across from the bar. But my week’s rent at the rooming house is almost up. I’ve been living on peanut butter, Wonder bread, and tap water all week. Forty bucks a night plus tips, the manager tells me. His name is Rusty. He’s the bartender, too. Dancers get an extra dollar for every cocktail they can get the customers to buy them between sets (when you can put your top back on), an extra
two
dollars if the guy buys another drink for himself, too. “I give you girls ice tea instead of liquor, but the jamokes who are running up a tab don’t have to know that,” Rusty says. “Another girl just gave her notice, so I can start you tonight.” I’m hesitant but desperate, so I decide to give it a try.

My shift goes from nine o’clock until 1:00
A.M
., but we get breaks. There are three of us dancers. Gloria is kind of flat-chested, but she’s a wicked good dancer. Rusty’s girlfriend, Anita, is the other one, even though she has stretch marks and is kind of thick in the middle. “Some guy starts getting grabby with you, I’ll give Rusty the signal and he’ll handle the situation,” she’s promised. The sound system blares sexy disco music: “Rock the Boat,” “Get Down Tonight,” that Donna Summer song “Love to Love You Baby.” My dancing is awkward at first because I’m so nervous and self-conscious about my boobs showing. But it helps that the spotlight on us makes it hard to see any of the men who are watching us. Older men, mostly, which somehow makes it easier. After a while I use my technique from before: thinking of things I’ve memorized to take me someplace other than where I am: the Commandments, the Religious Mysteries, old TV jingles.
Come and listen to my story ’bout a man named Jed, a poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed
. . .
Who can turn the world on with her smile? Who can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile
. . . It’s not so bad. By my third night, I’ve made enough money to pay for two more weeks’ rent on my room and go grocery shopping. But on my fourth night, while I’m in the middle of dancing to that stupid song “Afternoon Delight,” I look out at the crowd and can swear I see my cousin Kent out there among the old coots. I keep dancing but I’m freaking out, not concentrating, and I fall off the front of the stage and twist my ankle. The music stops and when the lights go on, I can see it’s
not
him—that it doesn’t even really look like him. But that ends my dancing career.

After the swelling goes down and I can walk on my ankle again, I go looking for other work. My luck is with me, and I get two different part-time jobs on the exact same day. In the daytime, I’m a fry cook at Josie’s Fish & Chips. At night, I work the shoe rental counter at Three Rivers Ten Pin. Both jobs leave me kind of smelly, from cooking grease and from the antifungal spray you have to squirt into the bowling shoes after people hand them back in. I’m grateful for that spray, though, because sometimes those shoes come back smelling like the jar of Limburger cheese my father used to take out of the refrigerator and spread on crackers. But hey, work is work. Every once in a while, one of the bowlers asks me out, but I always say the same thing: “Sorry, but I already have a steady boyfriend.” I’m not that interested in men, or women either for that matter. Mimi, one of my coworkers at the bowling alley, brings me to a women’s bar one night, but all the public affection—kissing and dancing crotch to crotch—makes me uncomfortable. “Not my scene,” I tell Mimi the next time she asks me to go with her. Priscilla and I are still in touch, though, and when she visits me those two times, we do stuff. But then she gets a steady girlfriend, a welder at Electric Boat named Robbin, and we lose touch.