Read Online Body and Soul: Short Story by Barbara Gowdy - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Barbara Gowdy
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mother.”
“Black and white and black and white,” Julie says.
Terry sighs. “I know
that,”
she says, giving up.
Julie, however, is referring to the checkered dress of a woman who has run across the parking lot and is now kneeling over the cat. Mommy! Julie thinks, ecstatic, and then she knows that it is not her mother, and she chews thoughtfully on her doll’s foot.
“Bleeding doesn’t mean you die, though,” Terry says, making her way over to her dresser. With the palm of her hand she taps the bristles of her hairbrush for the tingling sensation that reminds her of drinking Coke. Terry believes that Coke
looks
bristly. Milk, being smooth, she thinks of as round. The only thing she cannot imagine, the only thing she is prepared to be surprised by, is colour.
Terry was born nine years ago to an eighteen-year-old migrant corn detassler who left the abortion too late, mostly out ofcuriosity as to who the father might be. By the colour of the baby’s hair, she’d know. But Terry came into the world bald and blind and with a birthmark covering most of the left side of her face, and Terry’s mother walked out of the hospital that same evening. To the nurse who tried to stop her, she hollered, “I coulda had her at home and thrown her in a dumpster, ya know!”
The nurses adored Terry. She hardly ever cried; in fact, she smiled most of the time. (Some of the nurses held this up as proof that a baby’s smile indicated gas; others said it proved that smiling was innate and not learned.) During the day they kept her in a bassinet at their station, on a table next to the photocopier, where it was discovered that the rhythm of the cartridge moving back and forth sent her to sleep. When she was teething, the head nurse left written orders that the copier was to be kept going for as long as Terry fretted. The head nurse, a collector and exhibitor of ethnically dressed dolls, made outfits for Terry in her spare time. Crocheted gowns, elaborately frilled, embroidered and aproned dresses, matching bows backed with tape so they could be stuck to her bald head. The other nurses bought her toys and sleepers. If an adoption agency was coming by to take her picture, they dressed her up and dabbed make-up on her birthmark to give her a fighting chance.
No couples wanted her, though. It took two years for Children’s Aid to come through with just a foster mother, and even
she
was obviously reluctant. Her name was Mrs. Stubbs. “Terry won’t be getting any special treatment,” she informed the nurses. “My own son’s asthmatic, and I treat him exactly like my daughter.” She refused to take the dresses because they had to be washed by hand and ironed. “I’ve got better things to do than that,” she said.
Such as housecleaning. In Mrs. Stubbs’s house the plastic was still on the lampshades, and Terry was taught to eat cookies with a hand cupped under her chin to catch the crumbs.There were two other children—the woman’s daughter, who eloped when Terry was six, and the asthmatic son, who was devoted to goldfish. Once he let Terry put her hand in the tank to feel fish swim by. She was startled by how soft and slimy they were; she had expected the cold hardness of her foster mother’s wedding band. Her foster mother admired the glass-cleaning snails but was disgusted by the goldfish going to the bathroom in the very water that passed through their gills. The bathroom in her house smelled like pine cones. Terry was slapped for leaving the top off the toothpaste, for wearing her shoes in the house, for spilling anything—those were the worst offences. Living with this foster mother, she became a high-strung child with fingers like antennae. She could extend her hand and sense if another person was in the room. By the air currents passing through her fingers, she could tell if somebody was breathing in her direction.
Terry cried her heart out when she had to leave that home for a home closer to the school for the
“Black and white and black and white,” Julie says.
Terry sighs. “I know
that,”
she says, giving up.
Julie, however, is referring to the checkered dress of a woman who has run across the parking lot and is now kneeling over the cat. Mommy! Julie thinks, ecstatic, and then she knows that it is not her mother, and she chews thoughtfully on her doll’s foot.
“Bleeding doesn’t mean you die, though,” Terry says, making her way over to her dresser. With the palm of her hand she taps the bristles of her hairbrush for the tingling sensation that reminds her of drinking Coke. Terry believes that Coke
looks
bristly. Milk, being smooth, she thinks of as round. The only thing she cannot imagine, the only thing she is prepared to be surprised by, is colour.
Terry was born nine years ago to an eighteen-year-old migrant corn detassler who left the abortion too late, mostly out ofcuriosity as to who the father might be. By the colour of the baby’s hair, she’d know. But Terry came into the world bald and blind and with a birthmark covering most of the left side of her face, and Terry’s mother walked out of the hospital that same evening. To the nurse who tried to stop her, she hollered, “I coulda had her at home and thrown her in a dumpster, ya know!”
The nurses adored Terry. She hardly ever cried; in fact, she smiled most of the time. (Some of the nurses held this up as proof that a baby’s smile indicated gas; others said it proved that smiling was innate and not learned.) During the day they kept her in a bassinet at their station, on a table next to the photocopier, where it was discovered that the rhythm of the cartridge moving back and forth sent her to sleep. When she was teething, the head nurse left written orders that the copier was to be kept going for as long as Terry fretted. The head nurse, a collector and exhibitor of ethnically dressed dolls, made outfits for Terry in her spare time. Crocheted gowns, elaborately frilled, embroidered and aproned dresses, matching bows backed with tape so they could be stuck to her bald head. The other nurses bought her toys and sleepers. If an adoption agency was coming by to take her picture, they dressed her up and dabbed make-up on her birthmark to give her a fighting chance.
No couples wanted her, though. It took two years for Children’s Aid to come through with just a foster mother, and even
she
was obviously reluctant. Her name was Mrs. Stubbs. “Terry won’t be getting any special treatment,” she informed the nurses. “My own son’s asthmatic, and I treat him exactly like my daughter.” She refused to take the dresses because they had to be washed by hand and ironed. “I’ve got better things to do than that,” she said.
Such as housecleaning. In Mrs. Stubbs’s house the plastic was still on the lampshades, and Terry was taught to eat cookies with a hand cupped under her chin to catch the crumbs.There were two other children—the woman’s daughter, who eloped when Terry was six, and the asthmatic son, who was devoted to goldfish. Once he let Terry put her hand in the tank to feel fish swim by. She was startled by how soft and slimy they were; she had expected the cold hardness of her foster mother’s wedding band. Her foster mother admired the glass-cleaning snails but was disgusted by the goldfish going to the bathroom in the very water that passed through their gills. The bathroom in her house smelled like pine cones. Terry was slapped for leaving the top off the toothpaste, for wearing her shoes in the house, for spilling anything—those were the worst offences. Living with this foster mother, she became a high-strung child with fingers like antennae. She could extend her hand and sense if another person was in the room. By the air currents passing through her fingers, she could tell if somebody was breathing in her direction.
Terry cried her heart out when she had to leave that home for a home closer to the school for the
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