Swarm Page 8

  “You’re busy.”

  “The house is filthy. It’s always filthy.”

  I stepped back into the hallway. “Where’s the baby?” She didn’t answer so I walked from room to room, looking.

  Stretched across the baby’s cheek, the red mark looked like a wing. Her eyes fluttered open and closed and she smacked her lips, the bottom one marked by a white worm of skin where it was chapped. Carefully, I lifted her small, warm body off the quilt pushed into a blue recycling box and carried her to the kitchen, her tiny, hard head cupped in one palm. Her left arm pinwheeled and she released a puff of air. Standing at the counter, Shannon filled the kettle from a plastic jug and brought it to the electric stove, fuelled by power from their solar panels although the battery banks are beginning to corrode. Still, I’m jealous because all I have is fire. Dirty, slow to heat up. I cooed to the baby, brought her face closer to mine.

  “Don’t wake her,” Shannon said as she spooned a powder of roasted dandelion root into a mug. A green cabbage, small, not even ripe, sat on the counter.

  “Yours are ready?” I asked, although I knew they weren’t, that she’d harvested it early.

  “That’s what Sarah told me to do,” Shannon said, turning to face me. She pulled open her shirt to show the wrinkled edge of a cabbage leaf sticking out of her yellowed bra. The skin on her chest was flushed red. “It isn’t working. Big surprise.”

  “Maybe it takes time.”

  I cooed at the sleepy baby and she said again, her voice edged with warning: “Don’t wake her.”

  Light shone through the clean windowpanes. The bulrushes that Eric had cut were in a bunch on the counter, their tops lopped off and the outer green peeled away. The white had started turning brown. I didn’t want to ask for them, despite Mr. Bobiwash’s offer.

  Steam lifted around Shannon’s head as she filled a mug. From outside I heard Eric and Graham calling to each other through the fields. The sounds of a game, a pretend battle, or negotiations over a job they had to do. As she carried the imitation coffee to the table I thought of telling her about you, but her face was grim, deep lines bracketing her mouth. I stayed quiet, leaning against the door frame, the baby a weight in my arms. She sat down and I realized she hadn’t made a drink for me.

  “What else did Sarah say?”

  “Nothing,” Shannon said and blew on the surface of her drink. She stared into the corner at a crate of empty jars, ready for autumn preserves, their glass walls dusty from storage. “Jack thinks it’s just a rash. Just a temporary thing.” Her gaze slid over to me and stopped on the baby. “But it’s so fucking red it’s like a bull’s-eye.”

  “He’s worried about you.” In my voice, I heard the argument, the pitch of imploring, and I thought of my dad—trying, over and over again, to convince him it would be all right, that we’d be okay without the farm, and how nothing I said ever seemed to help him. He was sunk inside himself, imprisoned. I couldn’t help him and I couldn’t help Shannon either. Suddenly I felt very tired and refocused on the baby, that child, you, all our new beginnings. They needed such care, such cautious attention, lest we poison them with our old diseases. I thought of leaving, backing out the doorway with the baby in my arms, running up the road, and I wondered if Shannon would bother to follow or if she’d be relieved.

  “He went to find the doctor,” I told her. She sipped the drink without acknowledging me, like I wasn’t even there. I tried again. “We’ll find him,” I said, the sort of false reassurance I’d learned to offer to women. A lie. Shannon pursed her lips. “We have to,” I added.

  “We? What problems do you have?”

  “Thomson,” I said, too loud. The baby woke, her lips sputtering as she started to cry. Shannon pressed her fingers against her forehead. When she took her hand away I saw tiny crescent moons pushed into her pale skin.

  “I forgot. I forget things all the time.” She glanced at me as I jiggled the baby, trying to calm her. “But those boys. They devour everything.” The baby’s cries rose to a high-pitched panicked scream. I rocked her back and forth, unable to soothe her with a name because she didn’t have one. Shannon sighed but didn’t move from her chair even as the wrinkled face grew furious and hot.

  I don’t know what it’s like to have an infant. I was an only child, born years after my parents deliberated over whether to have kids or not. My cousin Emily, ten years older than me, happily became a mother, making jokes about how exhausted she was, sleeping when she could, tending easily to her newborn son. Shannon was different; she scared me. The baby wailed, arched her back like a cat intent on getting away. She wrinkled and squirmed. My hand felt wet. A bad smell rose from the small body.

  “She does this,” Shannon said, looking over at us with narrowed eyes. “She does this to me.”

  “Where are the diapers?” I asked, my stomach in a knot, but Shannon didn’t answer. Calmly, she set down her mug and stared at the window above the sink.

  “Shannon,” I snapped, but she wouldn’t speak. Entranced by something I couldn’t see.

  They weren’t by the makeshift crib in the living room. I couldn’t find them. Outside, the boys were in the yard, Graham kicking his legs out and circling in a strange dance and Eric, the youngest, squatting on the ground, untangling a trapline. He led me upstairs to his parents’ room and took the baby from me. He laid her on the bed, undid the safety pins, and changed her by himself. Methodical, effortless, as if he had been doing it for years.

  “Is your stepmother okay?” I asked him in a whisper, but he didn’t answer me either.

  Downstairs, I carried the baby back into the kitchen. I expected Eric to follow, but the front door opened and closed and I heard the sound of his footsteps crossing the porch, racing away. “Eric changed her all by—” I started to say, but stopped when I saw Shannon, leaning against the counter with her shirt open. Her left breast exposed. The wide nipple chapped and bleeding. A drop of milk like a strange tear, turned pink.

  “I wanted you to see.” The baby screamed again, writhing in my arms, as if she sensed the proximity of her mother’s milk. What I wanted was to put her down, anywhere, in the sink even, and leave. But I felt her agony. The small cage of her ribs, wrapped around her hollow stomach. I took a breath and walked over to Shannon.

  Together we fed her. Slowly, painfully, Shannon’s fingers gripping the edge of the table as the small mouth suckled. A hot cloth to bathe the nipple.

  “Are you okay?” I asked over and over. Not once did she answer. Her eyes were stuck on my necklace, the heart-shaped locket that dangled over the baby’s head. Coveting, I could tell, and I slipped it under my shirt. She had a tattoo, a small black and orange snake wiggling at the top of her breast. Warped from the swelling, its belly looked distended, like it had swallowed a rat. I touched it with my finger. “When’d you get that?”

  Shannon shrugged. “A long time ago. My sister. Her biker boyfriend.” With the back of one hand she pushed wisps of hair off her sticky forehead and we switched breasts. As the baby latched on, Shannon sucked her breath between her teeth.

  Keeping my voice light, I asked, “Have you thought any more about names?”

  Shannon laughed derisively. “He wants to name her Crow. What kind of a name is that?”

  I liked it but didn’t tell her so.

  When we were done, I carried the baby into the living room. She was smiling, a slight new flush in her sunken cheeks. One fist closed around my locket and tugged until I forced each finger open, pulled her hand away. I talked to her, the small, sad body, as her eyes drifted over my face, the whites slightly yellow. I wanted to carry her away, bring her home, but I knew that even if Shannon didn’t fight me, Mr. Bobiwash would, the boys. A girl was an asset—any child was—and she wasn’t mine to take. I put her on the couch and stood while Shannon sat beside her and laid her hand on the child’s belly. She stared at the mantle over the fireplace and I turned and saw old family photos. Children I didn’t recognize. A young, chubby girl, sta
nding beside a motorcycle with a man. He wore a cowboy hat and the two of them were laughing. “Is this you?” I asked Shannon.

  “Mona. The love of his life.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” I said.

  “But he especially loved Abby. He’d trade me for her like that.” She snapped her fingers and the baby stirred under her hand. I sat on the edge of one of the chairs, wondering when I could leave. Her shirt gaped open; her hair lay matted against her skull. She smelled sour. I knew I could never tell her about you. I wondered how she’d even survive.

  “You know I didn’t ask for any of this,” Shannon said, her eyes bumping over the mantle and moving through the room like a snake over a rock face. Branches of light came through the crack in the drawn curtains. Dust sparkled in the air. “Like my granny. She lived in Newfoundland. Wife of a fisherman who went down with his ship.” I winced, but Shannon didn’t even see. Her gaze had slumped to the floorboards, stuck there as she spoke. “We went there once. Beautiful place. Like Ireland, I guess. The same continent cut in half. That was our last vacation. We even flew.” When she said that, her chin lifted, something to be proud of. I smiled slightly, a small offering.

  The baby squirmed. Shannon’s hand fell away weakly when I picked her up to lay her in the recycling box. I pulled back the curtain and saw that a light rain had started, the first drops marking the dirt in the yard like a tally. The boys were gone.

  “Granny told me about fairies,” Shannon said suddenly, surprising me. When I turned, her eyes darted up to meet mine. “Little fucking thieves.” She held my gaze and I stared back at her, a twitch flickering around her scowling lips. Did she mean you? It seemed you needed protection from everyone except me. I waited for more. None came. Shannon groaned and stretched out on the couch, turning toward the back cushions. In the corner of my eye, the boys moved and I saw where they were, crouched in the garden, down the long rows of corn, weeding.

  Relieved, I left that house. Worried that they’d caught you, I walked home fast. In my mind I saw Mr. Bobiwash, waiting on the wharf for the doctor, a duck held out in offering, its bloody feathers gleaming green-gold, Marvin by his side.

  8 City

  At first I was a thief. The three of us were: Walter, Margo, and me.

  It was dark out when Margo woke me. I groaned, snapped the light on. It didn’t illuminate.

  “What time is it?”

  “After five,” she said. “He’ll be here soon.”

  She shut the door before I could answer, and I think that was because she knew I was having doubts. I lay there, watching the slow crawl of dawn through the corners of my room: across the poster of a mermaid stretched out on a seaweed-draped rock, the plywood shelf on steel brackets my dad put up when they’d visited in the fall that one and only time. They slept on the futon in our living room. My father had dropped the shiny hooks of his depression throughout the visit and I’d refused to be snagged. When they left, he gripped my upper arm and asked me to come home and all I could do was turn cold—a technique I sometimes try with Marvin, although he is not needy, only indifferent.

  “Hurry up,” Margo called through my door, and I had no choice but to drag myself out of bed. As I pulled on my jeans, I wondered where Marvin was, if I’d see him that day, what was happening down at the soup kitchen. Those prescribed duties had been a relief—do this, do that, do this. Like a job.

  Walter was late. By the time he arrived—bumping onto the sidewalk in a borrowed red car, one tire nearly flat, the radio antenna snapped off at the base—we’d lost the advantage of darkness. Margo flipped the front seat up so I could climb in and Walter grunted at me, a sound that could have been hello. His odour was strong, like a weird spice.

  We drove for twenty minutes or so, headed north, the city shifting from tightly packed downtown houses to industrial parks to a sprawl of huge homes, lined up like a planted pine forest. A pillar of smoke stood in the distance where somebody was burning garbage or a building had been set on fire. Over the years, the suburbs had pretty much emptied out. Families had walked away from their 3D TVs and cheap composite furniture. But Walter said we weren’t there for that stuff. We would strip out the central arteries, the copper wiring and pipe. “There are still shops that’ll pay,” he told me. “Cash or trade, canned food, clothes, bits of silver and gold. There aren’t a lot of places left, but if you dig around you can find them.” He nodded as he talked, moving his whole upper body. I wondered if he was high. “A buddy of mine does this in New York,” he said, his eyes flicking over my face in the rear-view. “He’s got a unit too. A team. You should see if Marvin’s interested.”

  I said nothing. Margo knocked her cigarette against the ridge of the open window.

  It was fully daylight by the time we entered the subdivision’s winding streets. Walter slowed to the speed of a restless pace. My stomach growled into the quiet and he hooked a plastic bag on to his claw and swung it back to me. I pulled out a strip of jerky. The meat was spicy and warm.

  We pulled into the driveway of a house with yellow grass poking through the dirty snow. Inside, the walls had already been sliced open, wiring and piping removed. Walter climbed under the kitchen sink and quickly slid out again. “Fucking plastic.” His hand on the floor made a clattering sound.

  At first the plan was to go back into the city and find an older house, but when we went outside, Walter’s gaze swung left. In the neighbour’s front yard, a toppled real estate sign was half covered by a fading pink sticker that read, REDUCED!

  “Is this safe?” I murmured to Margo as Walter slipped a folded strip of aluminum cut from a soda can into the lock and opened the side door. A baby cried somewhere close by.

  The house was still furnished. Two glasses stained with the red powder of dried-out wine stood on the granite countertop. A bowl half full of yellowed milk sludge and mouldy cereal Os sat on the table. I wondered what had happened.

  “Jackpot,” Walter said as he pulled a stereo out of a wooden hutch in the great room and handed it to me. “If anyone asks, you work for Walter’s Trash-Out,” he told me as I carried the machine out the front door. Lots of stuff went into the car—a Spiderman alarm clock, a set of stainless steel pots. Walter was elated. He jumped around, his one-piece green mechanic’s suit billowing with air. In the basement, he had to turn the power off before he started slicing open walls to unthread the wires.

  Nobody showed up to ask us any questions, and after a while I started to relax. Every room we went into was like a treasure chest. In the bedroom, I opened the top dresser drawer and found a blue velvet pouch full of jewellery. I pulled out a locket, heart-shaped, engraved with a winding pattern of vines. Inside were tiny black and white pictures of old people—a man with a handlebar moustache, a woman with her hair done up, smiling without showing her teeth. “Gold,” Margo said, coming up beside me. She opened the blue bag for me to drop the locket back in, but I closed my fist around it. “Just this,” I said because I knew what would happen to it—the miniature heart would be melted down, the pictures burned off, somebody’s past disappeared. Margo shook her head. She took it from me, pulling the threadlike chain through my fingers. “Stop being sentimental.”

  On the way home, Walter wanted to stop right away to swap the gold for cash, but I asked him to drop me off first. Margo offered us granola bars that she’d taken from the house. “No, thanks,” I said.

  She turned to Walter. “Sandy’s grown a conscience.”

  “Must be nice,” he said, his eyes hanging on to me, bloodshot and blue, moving to the road and back again. We drove in silence for a little while, passing a group of kids pushing their bicycles along the side of the road. Up ahead, the turquoise ring of a roller coaster twisted high above the buildings. “What did you and Marvin get up to the other night?” Walter asked.

  Margo slid one finger into the closed fist of her other hand and giggled.

  “Margo,” I snapped, annoyed.

  “Down there in the dark zone?�
�� Walter said, not letting up.

  I didn’t answer. All I wanted was out of the cramped, claustrophobic car, but Walter kept talking. I watched his mouth moving in the mirror as he told me things I didn’t know.

  “You know Marvin lives down in that filthy squat when his mother is loaded,” he said, his eyes meeting mine in the rear-view mirror. “That asshole doesn’t know what he wants.” He opened and closed his remaining fingers on the steering wheel. “And Phoenix,” he snarled. “Fickle bitch.”

  Margo stared into her lap, smiling, as Walter dragged his gaze over the landscape: an ocean of rooftops and the tall spirals of wood smoke climbing into the overcast sky. He pressed his lips tight together and all the light went out of his eyes. Momentarily, but I saw. When he turned back to Margo, a manic glow had relit itself in his face.

  “They should be overthrown,” he said, as if we were talking about royalty.

  By the time we got back home, I had a headache. Pressing a finger against my left temple, I leaned into the front of the car and asked Margo how much my share of the money would be.

  “Nothing now,” she said.

  “A couple weeks,” Walter told me, and Margo got out to let me onto the sidewalk. As I watched them drive away, I wondered where I would be by then.

  On that day I hatched another plan. It was all mine; none of the others had a part in it. Not the bum, as my mother would have called Marvin, if I’d ever told her about him, or Walter the disfigured, drug-addled lunatic, or the drama queen roommate I’d randomly met eleven months earlier. Instead, it involved Phoenix and Thomson. I liked them. With them I could have a chance at a good life, one my parents would be proud of. Not breaking windows or stealing. Down there, dishing out food to hungry people, I had felt useful, like I was contributing something, patching over small holes in the shambles all around us. Would they take me in? Was I brave enough to ask?

  When Margo came home the next morning, I told her we needed groceries and I’d get them if she gave me fifty dollars. She hesitated. “What are you getting? Sirloin?”