Tuesday, Monday
Fiction by Theressa Slind
Natalie and her friends wore stiff neon vests like sandwich boards advertising their faith in finding Bettina, the little girl who’d wandered into the bush three days ago. At least Natalie’s friends had faith — this was their second time through the same field because Morgan had a “good feeling.” They were just a few of the hundreds of volunteers, mostly locals but also people from neighbouring provinces, who’d responded to help in the search. The friends were four abreast, stepping through a field of ripe wheat, and had to shout to hear one another over the wind and susurration of drowsy wheat heads. Natalie’s vest flared out over her belly, and her ankles swelled further with clingy chick-weed. Her friends actually thought they were going to find the girl alive, and she’d give them a big hug or something. Like there wasn’t another possibility.
Natalie had learned there were possibilities aplenty. Before she got pregnant the possibilities were few but brilliant: highest graduating mark in the school division, scholarship to university, medical school, residency, specialty residency, fulfilling relationship with architect, children optional, half-marathons, wine appreciation, minimally decorated rooms, world travel. All this before thirty. Instead, she was pregnant by way of Andy-fucking-Gustafson: boy she’d gone to school with since kindergarten, boy who’d hilariously rubbed a powdery marshmallow on his butt in grade five, boy who’d grown disastrously irresistible. Natalie knew the girl, Bettina, was dead. Knew it like she knew Tuesday came after Monday.
Sweat trickled down the aching arch of her lower back into the waistband of her maternity leggings, creating a kind of wet girdle. Uncomfortable, for sure, but better than canning tomatoes with her mother, feeling disappointment as thick and scalding as steam off the canner. Natalie dragged her feet out at the end of the field, shrugged off the vest.
“We’ll find her tomorrow,” said Katie. “She’ll be so happy to see me. I’m her favourite babysitter.”
“You’ve said,” said Natalie who’d never been a popular babysitter. Too serious, didn’t like to play, showed frustration when the kids wouldn’t go to bed and let her get her homework done — children never asked for her. And now, having been irresponsible enough to get pregnant in high school, forget it. As a result, she only knew this Bettina as one of the many little faces tearing around wild-eyed with excitement at community suppers.
“Natalie-Fellatalie!” said Christian who’d remained his old, vulgar self around Natalie, which she appreciated. “Want a ride home?”
“I’ll walk, but, here, take this.” She handed him the vest.
“You sure?” shouted Morgan as she raced Katie to the car to claim shotgun.
“I can’t spend another minute with World’s Greatest Babysitter,” said Natalie, the truth of it carried away on the wind along with the absurd thought that soon she might need Katie to babysit. The sun was low and in Natalie’s eyes. The weight on her pelvis made her legs feel squashed. She already regretted turning down the ride, but there was no way she was going to chase after them, and she couldn’t turn back time: not one minute, not eight-and-a-half months. She called out, “And I don’t collect stamps anymore, Christian.”
Their old joke suddenly sounded stale, and she heard Katie’s unmistakable, “Awkward.” Katie was right. Natalie was awkward, and not just socially. She waddled up from the ditch onto the gravel road and inhaled the dust kicked up by her friends’ departing car. Then a red truck with an out-of-province licence plate sped by in the direction of her parents’ farm, fishtailing to a stop half a kilometre away. A man jumped out and ran into the bush bordering a harvested field. Whatever. People were acting weird these days.
She yarded on her leggings and started walking along the side of the road, reflexively checking her dead phone for a message from Andy. He was harvesting with his dad, making an effort to learn the business so he could “support the baby” after he graduated. He actually had a plan, but the thought of living in the old farmhouse Andy’s family normally rented to their hired men made Natalie want to cry. For one, she was pretty sure this is where she’d gotten pregnant. Two, it was disgusting — there were mouse droppings even in the tub. Three, though it was certainly minimally decorated — the only thing on the walls was a faded Playboy calendar stuck on September 1987 Playmate of the Month, Gwen Hajek — it didn’t exactly have the Scandinavian vibe Natalie was dreaming of. In that old farmhouse she’d become as stuck in time as poor, naked Gwen.
Natalie moved to the middle of the road, started walking along one of the two worn tire tracks. Except for the parked red truck ahead there were no vehicles in sight, and along the gravelly margin she felt every stone through her mom’s retro, thin-soled volleyball shoes. Because Natalie’s feet were too bloated for her own, she was literally in her mother’s shoes.
There were things to admire about her mother. Her productivity, for one. She worked angry, but, holy shit: the house and yard were spotless, bread was homemade, church and town committees were rigorously chaired, school lunches were envied, farm product was managed to the highest organic standards, local kids were schooled in Royal Conservatory. All done with a rigid dash for a mouth and quotation mark creases between her eyes — the emoticon for frustrated potential. One time Katie told Natalie she should cheer up unless she wanted “resting bitch face like your mom.” Better than resting dumb face like Katie’s mother.
Last night after supper Natalie had found her mother on the computer, tracing a finger down the screen.
“Mom, that’s why the screen gets so dirty. Just highlight a column.” Natalie reached for the mouse. “Stop it. I know what to do.” Natalie’s mother always knew what to do, and she’d decided Natalie would stay home and finish high school online while she took care of the baby. Natalie picked up their argument where they’d left off.
“Studies show face-to-face instruction is thirty-five percent more effective than online.”
Not when instruction is provided face-to-face by Gavin Prescott. you’re better off at home. That man can’t tie his shoes.”
“But I can’t either, Mom. See.” Natalie folded over her belly and let her arms hang. As the blood rushed to her head, Natalie knew all her dreams were ruined, even the modest ones like graduating high school on time with her friends. Oh, she’d finish high school, probably early. Natalie always finished what she started, like this baby, for instance, like Andy; she was no quitter. But she hadn’t started university yet, had she? And by the time she finished off raising the kid and Andy, well, did they even let you into medical school past thirty?
As she walked down the middle of the gravel road, the pressure on her pelvis and legs increased. She felt as if it were only her boat-sized shoes preventing her from plowing, feet first, into the packed earth. She groaned as she bent to scratch her ankle where an invisible burr had worked its way into her sock and kept on walking and scratching, the wind eroding new hollows in her left ear. She passed the empty red truck, was halfway home when she finally sat and removed her burr-sock. As she re-laced her shoe, an ache-pain-pressure-echo torqued through her body. Contractions had been sold to her by her mother as being, you know, kind of like menstrual cramps. Natalie’s vision took on a stark filter through the experience, and she glimpsed something in the ditch. Beer box? Candy wrapper? Pink tulle? When the pain echo subsided, she pushed herself up and crept down into the ditch, and then she saw it, deep in the swaying grass. The pink tulle in the periphery — TV, talk, social media — for the last three days; the little girl wall-paper she’d basically ignored, being too busy feeling sorry for herself and arguing with her mother. The figure under the ragged tulle was curled up. Natalie’s knee cap glanced off a rock, but she kept her voice soft and placed her hand on the tiny spine and ribs.
“Bettina?” The girl’s back was warm from the sun or life, Natalie didn’t know. She shook Bettina’s shoulder stoutly, and the girl made the sound of a kitten. “Oh god, thankyouthankyou- thankyou. Up we go.” Natalie lifted Bettina, pinned her to her hip with one arm, and laboured up the ditch and onto the road. She walked and talked, forgetting herself and everything other than Bettina. “When we get home we’ll call your mommy and daddy, and they’ll be so glad to see you. Are you thirsty? you must be thirsty. I’m sorry. I don’t have any water. I’m so stupid. My mom will know what to do.”
The red truck creeping beside Natalie surprised her. The driver leaned out the window and said, “Need a ride?” He slammed the truck into park and flung open the door. “Is that Bettina?”
“Do you have some water?”
“Yes, get in.” He herded them to the passenger-side door. “Step on the running board, and grab this here. My name’s Duncan.” He pushed her up, and she plopped into the bucket seat with Bettina in her arms. The man, Duncan, walked around the front of the truck. He looked about her dad’s age, but bigger, dressed funny in a camouflage windbreaker and pants. He got in, rolled up the window, and turned off the engine. The cab of the truck became a capsule of stillness, a world of its own. The only sounds were Bettina’s mewing and the wind outside. The truck rocked slightly, buffeted by the gusts.
Duncan took a bottle of water from the console and gave it to Natalie. The warm water created dark rivulets across Bettina’s filthy face. She gagged and coughed. “That’s enough for now. More when we get home, okay?” Bettina curled up on Natalie’s lap around her belly.
“I have a power bar in here too.”
“Let’s just get her home. My mom will know what to do.”
“Do you or don’t you want my help?” Duncan spoke to the driver side window. Natalie began to regret getting in the truck. She’d been her old heedless, untouchable self in that moment. How had she forgotten all the ways things can go wrong? “I’ve been tracking her over the last two days, you know. I figured she’d come out of the bush around here, and I was right.” Duncan looked at Natalie as if she had a green snot clot bulging out of her nostril. “But you found her.”
“I never thought I would,” Natalie whispered. “Lucky. That’s what I thought. you just got lucky. I’m a big hunter, you know. I can track anything: moose, deer, bears. And I’ve really upped my game in the last year with the interval training and the affirmations. You’ve got to believe in yourself, because if you don’t, who will? Mama did though. She believed in me. Not like dad. She always said, ‘Think positive, mister.’ Just like that, ‘Think positive, mister.’ Here’s an affirmation for you: Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow. you know who said that? Helen Keller. But I’ve never been lucky. I had to work like fuck to get anything I’ve got. And what would a blind girl know about shadows? Maybe she was playing everybody. Maybe she wasn’t blind at all.”
“Bettina’s lucky.” At the sound of her name, Bettina reached her scratched and bug-bitten arms around Natalie’s neck and hid her face. “And you had water. You helped.”
“But you found her.” Duncan slammed his hands into the steering on the stressed syllables. “Duncan, you idiot!”
“Do you want the reward money?” She wasn’t even sure there was reward money. She held Bettina tighter.
“I want her.”
Natalie moaned as a second contraction twistered through her body.
“What the fuck? Are you having a baby right now?”
“My mom will know what to do.” Natalie started crying. Big ugly sobs. They filled the cab with regret and sorrow and fear. “I just didn’t think. I didn’t think she’d be alive. I can’t believe I found her. Me. And then. And then I get into this truck. With you. you’re crazy. I’m such a fuck-up.”
“Hey, now.”
“And you’re probably dangerous. Look at you. you’re probably going to kill us, aren’t you?”
“Now don’t talk like that.” As rapidly as Duncan had wound up, he’d calmed. He turned the key in the ignition, shifted into drive, and the capsulated world of the truck cab changed as he drove towards Natalie’s farm. “You’re not a fuck-up; I’m no murderer. you’ve got to think positive.”
“I was so sure she was dead.”
“Kids are tougher than people think.”
The sun was low and the truck cast a long shadow which, though they drove slowly, seemed to race over the fields. Watching that shadow, Natalie thought about Helen Keller and about time. How she was supposed to time her contractions. How she wouldn’t turn it back even if she could. Because would she have wanted the alternative for Bettina? And if Natalie could adapt to the world of Duncan’s truck and of lost little girls — and it seemed that she was, adapting, that is, even formulating her own affirmation — she could adapt to anything. Into the dream that was her future, its rigid time-line, she could loop the unpredictable, the irrational, the frightening. Welcome these things until, like sight for a blind woman, time becomes figurative and generous. After all, this Tuesday comes before next Monday. »