Every Little Thing in the World (20 page)

“So she'll know you dictated it,” I said. Natalia stared off for a minute, then wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She sat up straight.

“Dear Margit,” she said. “As you probably know, I found out that you are not my sister, but my mother. Obviously we have a lot to talk about, and I want you to be prepared. Here is a list of questions. I hope you will answer each one truthfully when we see each other again. I really think that at this point everybody owes me some serious truth.”

She paused, waiting for me to catch up. My penmanship was nowhere near as good as hers, so I took pains to write clearly, if not prettily.

“In the meantime,” she said when my pen stopped moving, “I want you to know that I understand you had a choice, and that I'm grateful you decided to have me. I'm thankful for this life I have, and I deeply respect your courageous decision.”

I stopped writing. Outside the tent, shadows and voices milled, new people getting to know one another. Rain fell on the roof, not hard enough to make noise, but creating strange shadows, dark lines that rolled across Natalia's face. I put the pad back in her hands.

“Here,” I said. “Write it yourself.”

I climbed out of the tent and zipped it shut behind me. Silas and Jane had built a fire, which struggled to stay alive in the gathering dampness. The two of them reunited with the other counselors, talking and laughing. Bucket Head stuck close to
Silas. I could see Mick and his shady friends down by the water, but Brendan was nowhere to be found. Only Meredith and Lori sat by the fire, eating the wild blueberry mash with their fingers. I walked over and joined them. “Is that all the food we have left?” I said. My body had quickly digested the pineapple upside-down cake, and now my stomach grumbled furiously for more food. Jane, socializing fifty feet beyond, didn't look like she planned to cook us anything.

“There's a couple cans of hash left,” Meredith said. I opened one of them and settled it into the smoldering embers in an attempt to warm it up.

“So,” I said to Lori, who crouched miserably underneath the rain. “Do you think you'll change your mind?”

“I'm getting out of here the very first second I can,” Lori said. Meredith looked at me and shrugged apologetically. I smiled at her.

By the time I fished the hash out of the fire, the two of them had crawled into the tent to get out of the rain. A few minutes later Natalia sat down next to me. The food had heated up surprisingly well, and after a few bites I handed the can to her. She tasted it daintily, then scrunched up her nose and handed it back to me. The meat had an old, metallic taste, and the tiny potatoes tasted slimy and dense. But I couldn't stop eating. Sensing Natalia's eyes on me, I thought my gestures were too ravenous and put the food down. Bucket Head appeared immediately, sitting up at attention and wagging his tail. I picked up the can, in case someone else wanted the food.

“You might as well give it to him,” Natalia said. “He's got to eat too.”

I removed the fork and handed the can to the dog. His nose disappeared as he greedily lapped up the last of it. One second he'd jam his nose deep into the can, and the next second he'd paw at it frantically, trying to work it off his nose. Natalia and I laughed, and for a second I thought we could leave the weirdness of the tent behind. But then she said, “Mick says you're going to hell.”

A cold wave of fury washed over me. Part of me could understand why Natalia had gone haywire. However screwed up my own family was, at least I knew where I came from. I had never been lied to, never had the entire world shift around me and my identity. I got why she had a hard time with the idea of my abortion, even though it completely screwed up my ability to get one. But still.

“Mick says
I'm
going to hell?” My voice shook too much to rise above a whisper.

“For having an abortion,” she said. The can empty, Bucket Head trotted back to Silas. Natalia picked up a stick and poked at the dying embers. I could hardly see her face, half-hidden by her neon pink rain hood. I wondered why I didn't feel like crying. Weren't my hormones supposed to be going crazy? Shouldn't I want to cry at the slightest provocation? But I didn't want to cry. I just felt cold and tired and strangely dead inside. I wished, for the thousandth time, that I'd never met Tommy, or at the very least that I'd spoken up and insisted on stopping before it came to this. It was all so unfair. The mistakes I'd made weeks ago had
taken up the most insignificant, fleeting moments. And here I sat, still paying for them. If things kept progressing at this rate, I might be paying the rest of my life.

“Don't you worry about it?” said Natalia. “Don't you worry that you'll go to hell if you have the abortion?”

“Why are you suddenly talking about hell?” I said. “I thought Jewish people didn't believe in hell.”

“How do I know I'm even Jewish?” Natalia said. “I could be Catholic or Muslim or Buddhist. I could be someone who believes in hell. How am I supposed to know?”

“I thought it only mattered if your mother was Jewish.”

“If that were true,” she said, “then why all the hysteria about dating Jewish boys? The father matters. Believe me. He matters big-time.”

I had seen Natalia cry before, many times, and in the past I had held her hand and rubbed her back and helped her find solutions. But now I did something new. I stood up and walked away from her. As I left, she ratcheted up her sobs, so clearly for my sake that I only moved faster. My hood slid off, exposing my hair to the come-and-go rain.

I found Mick by the lake with his friends. They sat on land in one of the empty canoes, passing a deer moss joint. When Mick saw me coming he blew out a stream of smoke and stepped out of the canoe. “Hey, Syd,” he said. His raised his eyebrows, taunting and suggestive, then held the makeshift cigarette out toward me. I shook my head.

“I guess it's a little late for you, huh?” he said.

“I guess so.”

“So what can I do for you?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I hear you're a Catholic now.”

Mick laughed, a thin stream of smoke tracing the exhale of his breath. “Born and bred,” he said. “Don't take it personal, Sydney. I'm just looking out for your immortal soul.”

In the darkness I saw Mick's chiseled, restless face—a caged animal waiting to spring from his own skin. I knew he didn't believe in hell any more than he believed in the world where we now stood, the close woods and the vast lake and the hundreds of animals living out their lives, unseen, all around us. He had only been baiting Natalia, trying to get closer by placing a wedge between her and me, and of course by agreeing that I shouldn't have an abortion.

I wanted to ask him not to tell anybody, but knew this would be exactly like telling him to spread the word. The less he knew about my fears, the less he could exploit them. For now, Natalia had told him to keep quiet. I would have to trust in this motivation, protecting me, to please her.

“I could always help you out, you know,” Mick said. He leaned into me, his bright blue eyes inches from mine. He put one hand on my shoulder and drew the other back in a fist. He pulled back his elbow, then pressed the fist into my belly in a broad, frightening pantomime.

I stepped back, out of his grasp. I could feel my breath, quickening as if he actually had pressed the wind out of me.
He laughed again, a jeering burst. “Just let me know if you change your mind,” he said. “I'm here for you.” He ruffled my damp hair like a well-meaning big brother, then jogged back to his friends in the canoe.

The rain picked up. I could feel it gather in my hair, flattening the curls, water streaming down my face. My view of the three Youth at Risk, their own little rainbow coalition, blurred. Part of me wanted to run back to Mick and beg him, insist that he ram his fist as hard as he possibly could into my stomach and end this whole nightmare. Because who cared what happened to me? All I cared about was having this thing, this extra being, gone. At the same time, a more primal part of me brought my hands to my belly, terrified that his simple touch had done damage there. An ancient instinct, contrary to everything I knew about myself, cupping my hands like a mother. A mother! The one thing in the world I knew I didn't want to be, not now, possibly not ever.

I ran into the woods, through the rain, scratching my shoulders against trees, my sneakers squishing and squeaking over the wet leaf litter. And I wished for bears to come out of hiding, to maul me and harm me until my body expelled its invader. I wished to fall, a hard, bruising tumble that would bring days of fever and pain. I wished to get lost and starving in the woods, alone and hungry, nowhere near enough food to sustain one life, let alone two.

The bears stayed quiet. My feet planted themselves frantically but firmly. And no matter how far I ran, I could hear the
voices from camp bouncing off trees; teenage voices in their swirl of festivity and petty drama, not one of them understanding the life-and-death struggle I had no way of escaping.

By the time I got back to our tent, Meredith, Lori, and Natalia were already asleep. I crawled over them and peeled off my soaking clothes, then climbed naked into my sleeping bag. In the darkness, my heart pounded from running and from the memory of Mick's fist against my stomach. For the first time in my life, I seriously considered the idea of hell.

Neither of my parents was particularly religious. My father brought his new family to a Presbyterian church one or two Sundays a month, but he saved his fire and brimstone for social and environmental matters. My mother had been raised Catholic, but I'd never seen anyone in her family pay attention to anything Christian besides Christmas, which involved presents and roast turkey but no midnight Mass. I'd never heard my mother mention the word “hell,” and if she knew I was pregnant she would deliver me to an abortion clinic faster than you could say Hail Mary. But still. What if hell did exist? And what if abortion earned me a one-way ticket? I tried to imagine a world with devils and pitchforks and never-ending flames. But none of it felt as frightening as a huge pregnant belly, or childbirth, or finding myself a mother at sixteen.

In the tent the other girls snoozed beside me, dreaming their simple dreams, unaware how lucky they were, to house one single soul.

chapter eleven

my life, not flashing

before my eyes

Every night we burned our garbage in the fire. When the girls got their periods, throughout the day they would collect their tampons in a brown paper bag, which they would toss into the flames with the rest of the trash. Spared this ritual myself, I would watch the witchy smoke climb high into the Canadian night, its spell not powerful enough to make my body join in.

The night after we left our drop-off point, Natalia burned her last bag of tampons. I sat next to her as she used the flare of light to read her letter from home for the thousandth time. She and I had forged another strained truce, maybe because we couldn't avoid each other, or maybe because we felt so sorry for each other.

The letter from Natalia's parents didn't mention anything they'd revealed before she left. It was just chatty news and loving words. No mention of Steve or Switzerland or even Margit—other than that she sent her love. Natalia pored over it again and
again, trying to find something between the lines that clarified her new, strange situation. Finally, giving up, she tossed it into the fire. “At least you have something to throw,” I told her.

She patted my knee. “Maybe she didn't get hers out in time,” she said.

All I'd got in the mail was a single postcard, written by Kerry and signed by her and “Dad,” not an actual signature, but in Kerry's handwriting. When Mr. Campbell handed out the mail, we'd all crowded around him, waiting for our names to be called. I stood there as all the letters were handed out, not realizing how much I wanted to hear from my mother until it became crystal clear she hadn't written. Now, sitting next to the fire, this seemed so frankly mean that it brought tears to my eyes. What had I done that was so bad? What, beyond my inconvenient existence, had earned me such a hostile rejection? Before being left almost empty-handed and clearly waiting in the midst of all the other kids waving their letters from home, I had almost begun working up my resolve to tell her about the pregnancy. I knew that she would take everything finally and completely out of my hands. But now, all I could think of was how she would find the pregnancy proof of me as all-around bad kid. I thought I would almost rather have the baby than let her rescue me—in all her self-righteous fury—from my reckless teenage self.

We'd left our drop-off point plus one dog, minus two people. Lori motored off in Mr. Campbell's boat, waving happily, the
first time I'd seen her smile in the two weeks I'd known her. I stood on the shore with Meredith, waving as if we'd been friends, wishing her clear skin and feather pillows for the rest of the summer.

Charlie motored out on the same boat but didn't bother waving. He sat in the front seat, on his way to join a group who'd lost a camper to acute appendicitis (the kid had been airlifted out in the first week, to the hospital in Keewaytinook Falls). I wondered how, without cell phones, they had managed to contact a helicopter. Maybe Silas had an emergency one, stashed in his pouch with the surprise wads of cash. But when I asked him, he just laughed. “There's no reception here, kemo sabe,” he said. “No cell towers hidden in the trees. Your modern technology's no good on Lake Keewaytinook.”

That first night after the drop-off point, the letter from home burnt along with the last of her tampons, Natalia allowed Mick to claim a tent for them. Silas and Jane had already gone to bed, and Mick stood up and pulled back a flap, letting mosquitoes buzz inside by the hundreds.

“Not so fast, little man,” he said to Sam, who knelt to throw his sleeping bag inside. “Tonight this is for the lady and me.”