Rachel swallowed hard.“She may not be a saint,” she said, angry at herself when her voice cracked, tripping on the sudden understanding of her grandmother’s complexities.“But at least she’s taken care of me, been there for me, which is more than you can say for yourself.”Her blood felt like it was on fire.In the face of all of Mary’s many misdeeds and broken promises, her addictions and madness, Rachel had never accused her mother of anything before.She was frightened, but proud of her own courage, like she’d just jumped off a high diving board.
“She didn’t pull me into a bloody shower with her and callyoua witch,” she continued.“She didn’t drag me out to live in Etobicoke.I slept on a couch anddidn’t go to school.You were drunk or high or off fucking Simon half the time.I ateTwinkiesfor breakfast, if I had one at all.Child Services took me away from you for good reason.So don’t criticize Gran for giving me a home and doing what you wouldn’t.My relationship with her is clearly very different than her relationship with you, and I won’t apologize for that.”
She already knew that later she would need to sit with the knowledge that she might have had a sibling.That, if what Mary claimed was true, Dora had intervened to abort the pregnancy.She knew by then that there were indeed things her grandmother hadn’t told her, but surely everyone was entitled to a couple of secrets.And perhaps her grandmother had a good reason for keeping that one from her.
“Right,” Mary said, scowling, “because she’s the perfect parent.She’s just never wanted me to have any happiness since…” She dragged on the forgotten cigarette in her hand, burned mostly down to the filter.Rachel looked at Mary’s nails, painted the same abalone blue as Rachel’s.They’d sat out on the back porch three nights ago, flipping through magazines and drinking Dora’s iced tea as they painted each other’s nails.
“This is nice,” Mary had said, wiggling her fingers in the air and smiling, which she rarely did unless she wanted something from someone.“We match.Like sisters or something.”
Rachel had smiled then, but with a mixture of pleasure and hesitancy.She was drawn to her mother’s attention—she’d had more of it thissummer than she’d ever experienced in her entire life—but she also didn’t want to be anything like her, even if it was just a matching manicure.
Now, in the heat of their argument, she knew she’d been a fool to think she and Mary had truly gotten anywhere with their relationship that summer, that two months of trips to the drive-in and painting each other’s nails the same colour could possibly make up for eighteen years of abandonment.
She looked at her mother’s back, a little sunburned above the line of her black spaghetti-strap tank top.Then a thought flashed through her mind, unbidden and intrusive as a lightning bolt.
Just one push, and she’d be gone.
And she saw herself do it in her mind’s eye, heard the quick rustle of the grass and weeds as Mary’s body disappeared over the cliff edge.
Rachel’s breath came hard and fast with fearful shame.She shook her head to dispel the image in her mind, recoiled farther away from Mary.
“Anyway,” Mary said, finishing the cigarette and flicking the butt into Dora’s herb garden to land among the lavender.Rachel jolted her mind back to the moment.“I don’t want to talk about the past, Rachel.I just won’t.I’ve gotten my shit together and I want to move forward with you and have a future.”
Mary really didn’t get it, and Rachel didn’t know whether it was deliberate ignorance, or that whatever was wrong with Mary made it impossible for her to see the damage she inflicted on others.
“Except all we have is the past,” Rachel said icily.“If you won’t talk about that, won’t explain why you’ve—”
“You know what?”Mary barked.“Never mind.I’m done here.I’m done.”She threw up her hands, swung her legs around and stood, leaving Rachel alone facing the lake, the serenity of it taunting her as her insides boiled with bitterness.After so many years, with countless disappointments and devastations added to her quiver of life experience, she was still unable to believe how quickly and easily her mother was willing to give up on her.
CHAPTER 24
EMILY
August, 1961
Day 55 (128 to go)
Emily closed her eyes against the incessant burning between her legs.She shifted in the old rickety school chair she was perched on in Classroom 2 during their so-called typing hour.She slid her bum farther down the seat, which she wished to God had a chair pad.She could hardly get comfortable sitting anymore, especially the day after a treatment.
She’d gone to Dr.Stone’s office yesterday morning for the second time in as many weeks, held back her sobs as the doctor lanced the warts, then sprayed them with something from an aerosol can.Emily had watched carefully, trying to get a look at the label, which was small, with minuscule type, but couldn’t see much.The good news was that the warts had felt a little better after a few days, in between treatments.They still burned, but didn’t itch quite as much.
Emily had never experienced anything like this.Of course, she’d never experienced anything like this entire assignment.It seemed mad that she was doing it, and even more mad that things like this and lice and bathing once a week were now a regular part of her existence.How foreign it all was to her.It seemed impossible that beyond these walls there were a million and a half people who bathed regularly, who slept on proper mattresses and saw their families and didn’t have verminliving on their bodies.But then, that wasn’t exactly true, was it?That comfort may have existed for many people, but meeting these women at the Mercer had opened Emily’s eyes to the realities of others.Women who came from broken homes and poverty, who were ill in the mind or body.She could see now how those things limited a person’s opportunities, dictated the direction of her life as they forced her down paths that were rockier, darker and more dangerous than the ones Emily had been allowed to traverse.She thought of June Jones’s accusation on the sidewalk back in the spring:I betyoulot have a whole other set o’ rules than the ones the likes of us gotta live by.
She looked around at her fellow inmates now, the ones she knew, like Vera and Gertrude.Vera would leave here eventually, perhaps with her baby, perhaps not.Maybe, if she behaved as they wanted her to, she might stand a chance of keeping it.But what about after?What about the future for any of these women?Would they end up in June Jones’s brothel?On the street?Tied to a bad man out of economic necessity?Lizzie’s words continued to echo in her head, and she knew they would appear in the article.
If it isn’t one prison, it’s just another…
Emily had to bide her time now until the treatment cleared the infection, which she hoped would be before the end of her sentence in December.She had no idea how long this type of thing usually persisted.She knew she had enough now for a solid story, but by the judge’s order, there was no way she would be released until her sentence was completed.But she found, in the meantime, she could hardly sit by and watch blandly as this alleged “reform institution” provided no actual reform or benefit to its residents.No skills training beyond mopping floors, laundry, and bad sewing.This classroom may as well have been a cardboard prop for the benefit of the board of governors, and nothing more.
The burning in her groin came then in an almighty wave, and she stood up instinctively to ease the pressure.Twenty-odd sets of eyes in all colours turned and looked at her, waiting, as though she had something to say.
Perhaps she did.
Emily swallowed, walked toward the blackboard, and turned to face them.
“Does anyone want toactuallylearn how to type?”she asked, an impatient bite to her voice.“I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of just sitting here doing nothing.”Everyone stared.“Because I know how to type.I can teach you, if you want.It’s an important skill.If you know how to type, when you get out of here, you might have a chance at a secretarial job.It can take you a lot of places.”
A couple of the women were frowning, though they looked interested.Others were smirking, as though Emily were a joke.And maybe she was.Who knew.But she couldn’t just sit here anymore.
