Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (9 page)

“Thought I better tell you somethin' else. Told her I never would, but I don't wanna see her rot in some crazy house. I got a aunt there….”

I wait, and Dale looks at the street again, kicking at a pebble. “You got to be careful what you do with this. I mean, who you tell.”

“Okay.”

“Can't just be tellin' anybody.”

“Okay, I won't. Tell me.”

“Reason I know them burns wasn't caused by no boilin' pot of spaghetti is she tol' me different.”

“What'd she say?”

“Said her daddy pushed her face against a burnin' wood stove.”

The hammer hits my stomach with such force that my knees turn to rubber. “
Jesus Christ
. Are you shitting me?”

Dale casts a sideward glance at Ellerby, then back at me. “You think I'd drive over to your house in the middle of the goddamn night to shit you?” To Dale the very worst thing in the world is to be called a liar. I need to remember that.

“No. I didn't mean that. I just meant…Jesus, Dale. Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I'm sure. Night she tol' me she was fixin' to kill herself.”

God, I'd had no idea. “How'd you stop her?”

“Had to slap her around pretty good,” he says. “That ain't no way, to go killin' yourself.”

I glance over at Ellerby, who has just set a personal record for speechlessness. In the dim streetlight I see his face is drained of blood. He says, “Why didn't you tell someone?”

“She tol' me not to.”

“Yeah,” Ellerby says, “but…”

“Ain't no buts. I said I'd keep my mouth shut and that's what I done. Shit, who would I of told?”

“I don't know,” Ellerby says. “Cops. Child protection people.”

Dale snorts and spits on the ground. “Shit. When was you born, man? Those guys don't listen to jokers like me. I give my word to Scarface I'd keep my mouth shut, an' that's just what I done. 'Cept for now. Don't wanna see her rottin' in some crazy house, like I said. Maybe we ain't such good friends anymore, but we was once.”

I put my hand on his shoulder, but he pulls away. “Listen,” I say. “We'll figure out who to tell. We'll be careful. Thanks for coming here, man. Really. I owe you.”

Dale laughs. “Gimme your lunch money.”

“A number of you have chosen abortion as your topic,” Lemry says toward the end of class, studying a list in her hand. “Since there is such an interest, I'm setting aside several days for discussion to be sure everyone gets time.” She steps around to the front of her desk, removing her reading glasses. “Let me warn you, this is a topic that can get out of hand.
Adults
don't handle it well. I'd be surprised if there weren't people in the room who have had experience with abortion, either directly or through friends. So I'm going to keep a tight rein on things. I will feel free to remove you from the discussion, or even the room, if you're disrespectful toward other people's views. That won't necessarily mean you're in trouble with the law, it'll just mean I think you need a break. As always, you're entitled to your opinion,
but you're also accountable for decency.”

She doesn't ask for agreement. We've had some pretty spirited discussions over the past three weeks, about child abuse and women's rights and racism, among other things, and what's becoming clear is that most tough problems in the world run into each other. We start talking about one and we end up talking about another and no one can figure how we got there. I think Lemry knows that.

 

I'm off my pace a bit. Jody's in the bleachers watching Brittain, and I can't take my mind off her note. I'm hitting my time standards, but when I should be bearing down in the stretch laps my mind wanders.

I've always tried to stay cool when it comes to matters of the heart. As a fat kid growing up I just assumed there would never be a girl for me. In junior high I watched the popular kids hang out playing boy-girl games, and I told myself they were stupid and wrote mean things about them in Sarah Byrnes's and my trashy newspaper, but truth is, sometimes it hurt so bad I wanted to die. I told myself the kind of friendship I had with Sarah Byrnes—the tough kind—was better. I think most of us tell ourselves we don't want what we think we can't have just to make life bearable.

When I started swimming and began to shed some of my outer insulation, things changed a bit. A few girls have even shown interest in me over the past couple of years; they just weren't the ones I was interested in. Don't think I didn't consider taking up with them anyway, just so I wouldn't look like a social adjusto, but I didn't.

So far, I've opted to laugh off my loneliness in that area, but I do know it's serious stuff and I'll have to deal with it someday. I wish my mother could be more help, but she treats love like an extracurricular activity. I think my dad hurt her a lot, though she's never said much about that, probably because I have as many of his genes in me as hers—twice as many visible ones—and she doesn't want me thinking there's something wrong with me because my dad was a jerk. Someday I'll have to sit her down and have a serious discussion.

And now there's Jody. Sure, she's in the bleachers watching Brittain, so maybe she's changed her mind since dropping me that note, but she's a possibility now. As Ellerby said, anything that's known can't be unknown, and I have that note locked away in the headboard above my bed. And believe me, it's known. In a biblical sense. I have consummated its existence, yes I have. Ellerby was right—I should have acted more
quickly. The longer I wait the more reasons I can think of why it means something other than what I thought it meant when I first read it.

“Steamrollers,” Lemry yells. “One hard, one easy; two hard, one easy, up to ten and back.” My mind calculates; a total of 100 laps hard, 19 easy. Jesus, will I be glad in a month or so when we start to taper off for state. Being a distance man, I'm expected to come out on top of this.

Brittain and Ellerby go out in front. The first lap is a twenty-five yard sprint, then an easy twenty-five followed by a fifty-yard sprint. They're still pulling away from me at four hard—a hundred-yard sprint—but there I begin to close the gap. My easy laps are faster than theirs, and as we begin into six hard, then seven, stored blubber comes into play. By eight hard, we're even, and beyond that I'm pulling away with every stroke. At ten hard, they're in my dust—or my mud. God, this feels good. There is no place I feel more powerful or more in control than in the second half of a tough distance workout. I piss and moan with the best of them reading Lemry's workout on the bulletin board, but once I'm in it, I'm
in
it. Whoever beats me can't let up, because the older I get, and the longer the distance, the tougher I am. I figure I'll make the
Guinness Book
of World Records
by swimming the Bering Strait some New Year's Eve after I turn ninety. I hope Brittain's still around for me to hate by then, though he'll probably be secure in heaven, and out of everyone's hair.

I'm cooking in the decreasing laps, eight hard and less. Ellerby's pulling away from Brittain, but he's way back from me and I need a challenge, so I'm thinking it'd be a nice touch to double-lap old Mark, especially with Jody watching. It shouldn't bother him. Brittain's talent is speed, not tenacity; but I have survived my years as a fat kid by mastering the adolescent psyche, and I know he'd rather eat his own liver than have Jody see me standing in the shallow water looking for something to do while he finishes his last two laps. Hey, nobody ever called me sensitive.

Skullduggery is in order here. I'll have to push harder through the easy laps without his knowing, because if he discovers me, he can hold me off.

When I finish seven hard, we're at opposite ends of the pool and I'm due for one easy. Instead, I turn it on coming off the wall, back off when I swim into his view and pick up again once we've passed each other. I don't think he caught me, so I'll get another chance to make up a bundle after six hard. This is too easy. I hope Jody appreciates it.

 

“Abortion,” Lemry says, pacing the perimeter of the room. “This is delicate stuff, so let me remind you once again to be careful. I've read some rough drafts, and it's clear that those of you who chose the topic have strong feelings. My guess is that others do also. For purposes of discussion, keep your passion to a minimum and make your points rationally.”

I'm going to sit back, at least for the first round. I know for a fact that Brittain and two others in the room—Sally Eaton and Cynthia Parrish—have picketed the clinic up at Deaconess Hospital where women in this town go for abortions. And Jody has been up there at least once. Plus it's one thing to mess with Brittain's head in the pool, but when a subject bangs up against his religious beliefs, he gets
cranked,
and anyhow I don't even know what I think about this. I do believe women ought to have a choice, but that's because my mother has always been so vocal. Truth is, I don't have to worry about getting pregnant (a line Lemry better not hear unless I want to do push-ups in the aisle until the end of the period), and unless something in my life changes drastically, I won't be approaching an activity that will cause anyone else to become pregnant in the near future. Mr. Moby Calhoune has been voted the Closet Sex Maniac Most Likely to Become Pope three years running.

“Who wants to start?” Papers shuffle, eyes fix to desk tops. Lemry fingers through the rough drafts. “Ms. Eaton, you turned in an extensive draft. Could you give us a rough sketch of what you wrote?”

“Sure,” Sally says. “The hard fact about abortion is that it is murder. A fetus has no capability to stand up for itself, and yet it is as alive as you or I. So-called pro-choice activists say it isn't because it doesn't speak or communicate in any way we know. Yet if you look at the growth between conception and birth, which is greater than in any period between birth and death, no one can say in good conscience it isn't life. The taking of life is murder.”

Whew. Lemry has to be impressed; I am.

“Mr. Brittain?”

“Couldn't have said it better,” Mark says. “The truth is, potential mothers and people who conspire with potential mothers to allow abortion will pay forever in the afterlife.”

Lemry nods. “Let's keep this discussion a bit more immediate, okay? We'll discuss religion and belief systems in another segment.”

“That's the problem,” Brittain says back. “You can't separate this question from spiritual reality. That's the only way pro-choicers can make an argument. But
there are laws far more powerful and absolute than human laws. You can't argue the question of abortion without including the laws of God.”

“You make a good point,” Lemry says, “but for our discussion we need limits, or the next thing you'll hear is Mr. Ellerby making a case for every self-proclaimed prophet and cult leader and tribal shaman and TV huckster, and your spiritual argument will get lost. You'll say once again that the Bible is the word of God and Ellerby will say tell that to twenty billion Moslems and Chinese, because Ellerby is prone to exaggeration. Then you'll bring in faith, and Ellerby will counter with biblical interpretation, which you will point out is nothing more than cheap rationalization in order to avoid being responsible to God. Both of you will feel right, nothing will be resolved, and the few members of the class who remain awake will hate both your guts.” She said it all in one breath. Not bad. “So just let it be understood that your belief says anyone who participates in abortion will be punished in the afterlife and let it go at that.”

Megan Buckman raises her hand. “Abortion is not murder,” she says. “It's a decision.”

“I agree it's a decision,” Brittain says. “It's a decision to commit murder.”

Megan talks right through him. “It's a decision not to have a baby. Calling it murder is just a way to ignite the issue; get emotions in the way of rational decisions.”

“A fetus is a life,” Sally says back. “Pure and simple. The taking of a life is murder. There's nothing emotional about it.”

Ellerby watches intently, holding back, which is unusual; nothing excites Ellerby more than a good fight. I'm also surprised we haven't heard from Jody.

Megan takes a deep breath. “There's some question among scholars about when life actually starts.”

“Only among scholars who have a need for abortion to be okay,” Sally says. “It doesn't take Albert Einstein to know that if something is growing and using nutrients, it's life. If they discovered it on Mars, they'd sure say it's life.”

That's a good point.

Megan is unflappable. “By that reasoning, anything that can swim upstream and bang its head against the walls of a female egg until it crashes through is also life, which means every time one of these guys takes his love life into his own hand, that's murder, too. Willful destruction of sperms is mass murder, using that argument.”

Ooh, Megan! Gettin' close to
home.

Lemry has the hint of a smile on her face, but she says nothing. I guess she dropped her tight rein somewhere.

“It's not human life until the two are united,” Sally says. “That's the beauty of two people being together.”

Megan won't be moved. “But we're looking for the
line
here. The line between when there's life and when there's not. That means we have to look at capability. By your definition, knowingly killing a sperm would have to be murder, particularly if you know it could be put to good use—and every guy in this room has taken sex ed.”

Christ. A minute ago I was just a big old husky bugger out there turning in most of my homework and getting from one end of the pool to the other in a hurry. All of a sudden I'm a Son of Sam. I hold world records in this field.

“Sally and Megan are taking this argument in the classic direction, though maybe a little far,” Lemry says. “And I must say, ladies, you've done your homework. Anyone else have thoughts? If you don't, you'd better get some. This issue won't go away. What about you, Mobe?”

“I was just thinking of what to say when I turn myself in to the authorities,” I say, staring at my desk.
“‘Yes sir, detective. I knew they could make a baby, but I gave them a home in my sock anyway.”' It gets a laugh, and even a few female shrieks.

“People who joke about something this serious,” Sally says evenly, “are either poorly informed, or they're afraid to stand up for what they believe.”

That embarrasses me a bit. “Look, Sally. The reason I haven't said anything is that Coach will ask for a solution, and I don't have one. If I took seriously what I've heard so far, I could wind up thinking all the guys in the room are going to have to spend the bulk of their adult years in prison, to get out just in time to go straight to hell. And I guess there could be a case made for bringing charges against any girl who knowingly lets an egg drop without trying her best to get it fertilized, but by Brittain's standards she'd have to be married to do that, so everyone should be married by the time they're twelve just in case. In other words, it gets pretty ridiculous.”

“The sperm and egg argument isn't mine,” Sally says. “It's Megan's. And she used it to make a rational argument look silly.”

I say, “Maybe. But even if you drop the sperm and egg argument, that still leaves room for some question about when human life begins. Yeah, from the moment
of conception it could grow up to be a baby. But it ain't a baby. It doesn't have baby trappings. You know, arms, legs, eyes. They're coming, sure, but they ain't there yet.” Actually, I'm remembering most of this from listening to my mother. I really don't have much feeling. I'm just reacting to Sally calling me down in front of the class.

“But once there's conception, it's all continuous; there's no way to draw the line,” Sally says.

“Sure there is,” Megan breaks in. “We draw the line wherever we want to draw it. Changing abortion law proves that.”

Brittain explodes. “There's a law higher than that! Don't you understand? There is
higher law!
And it's not flexible!”