November awoke from the dream into the greyness of a
Manitoba early morning. Away from home, away from her
parents, away from Nick, she felt that the floor was collapsing
beneath her. The sense of falling was heightened in the
semi-darkness of the hotel room, and it was as if she
could feel the emptiness within herself. It was an absence
of something she thought she would never miss.
“Nick...,” she whispered hoarsely, pleading
for him. She stumbled from her bed, her feet cold despite
the carpeting. Her mouth felt dry, and her eyes stung
as if she’d been crying all night, crying in her
sleep.
Calm down, she told herself. Everything’s all
right now. You did what you had to do.
She looked at the clock. It was a quarter after six,
too early to go to Silence, sleeping in the adjoining
room. November curled up on the carpet facing the wall,
wishing she could go next door and let her friend console
her. Silence wouldn’t mind, surely. Silence would
hold her and tell her a story to get her mind off what
had happened. She would let November stroke her long,
platinum hair, and she would whisper to her in a voice
like spider webs, whisper that she’d done right.
November’s breathing steadied, and she forced
herself to study the pattern of the wallpaper, how it
connected to the carpet. A small, white piece of string
rested on the carpet fibres, and this was what she focussed
on, clearing her mind of the terrible dream she’d
had. The dream had been full of screaming faces, faces
without mouths, faces that couldn’t scream but did
anyway.
After what seemed like an hour, November rose and went
to the bathroom.
“I wish I wasn’t here,” she said to
herself. “I wish I was home.” She’d
come to hate the hotel bathroom, the way every time she
used a soap it was neatly replaced later that day, as
if she hadn’t used it at all. She was afraid to
make a mess in this bathroom, afraid the housekeeper would
come and erase any trace that November Nothing had been
there. She didn’t feel strong like November should
be. She felt scared and exhausted. How long had they been
here in this hotel? It seemed like a month or more.
I want to go home, she though miserably, watching her
face in the mirror. She’d put on weight in the past
month. The gauntness of her cheeks was lost to a new plumpness
in her appearance. The hollows under her eyes had become
a calmer expression, and the sallowness of her skin had
disappeared. The person looking back at her had a healthy
glow, more color to her cheeks. She ran a hand through
her hair, lustrous and soft.
Maybe it was the water here that made her hair this
way when it had been limp and coarse in Toronto, like
a dead animal nesting on her scalp. The irony made her
want to scream. She looked too good now. Or maybe she
was just imagining it, looking for something good to hold
to, something to fix the ravaged, molested landscape of
her soul. She’d harvested all her sanity; what else
did she have left?
It was a good thing you came to us, the doctor
had said, it was almost too late.
A good thing, she’d said. A good thing. The words
rang in the silence of the bathroom like some perverse
riddle. How could it be a good thing? Riddles had simple
answers. didn’t they? You thought and thought until
it finally exploded on you, and you went, how easy that
was, how it was right in front of me the whole time.
“But that’s the difference,” she whispered
flatly, the lump in her throat building. “There’s
no answer.”
The sadness of the situation rushed at her in a wave,
and her knees buckled. Would it have been a boy or a girl?
Would it have looked like her or the father, whoever’s
back seat she’d shared a lifetime ago at a rave
where her only concern was how long to wait after the
acid trip to get high with Silence and Tony. The abortion
had left her weak and sore, and she wished for anyone:
Silence, Tamlin, Tony, her parents, anyone. So stupid,
she thought viciously. Her hands balled into fists, ready
to pummel some invisible opponent.
"So stupid." She whispered. It became a chant,
over and over, her heart pounding in rhythm with the cadence
of her self-hatred, and she was screaming it aloud before
she could stop herself. The screams seemed to rise from
her soul, from the scraped, oozing emptiness of her womb.
Silence burst in through the door that connected the
two rooms. She came to the doorway of the bathroom, looking
down at November curled on the sterile bathroom mat. She
had no words to help the pitiful creature before her.
Tamlin joined her quietly. Awakened by the screaming that
had now toned down to a racking, gasping, sobbing noise.
The two of them watched.
November pulled herself up to the toilet seat and vomited,
then vomited again. Silence rushed forward to hold her
hair. November heaved, three times, then wiped her mouth
on her sleeve, already wet with tears.
“I made the wrong choice.” She choked on
each word, staring into the toilet bowl.
“Oh, my God. I made the wrong choice, didn’t
I?”
