Born That Way (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

I'm galloping. I can feel the wind on my face and I hear the pounding of hooves. It's fun, and it's so easy! Look, no reins, no saddle, and we're in the middle of a galloping herd of horses. There are blacks and greys and pintos, flying manes and tails. And look how stable I am! I'm not falling off, I'm not sliding, I'm in perfect relaxed wonderful blissful balance. I could go on like this for miles and miles and miles.

What was that clicking sound? It was exactly like the noise my clock makes before—

I open my eyes. The light is coming in around the curtains. I shut off the alarm and fall back into the pillows, and try to think of anything in the upcoming day that will be even half as interesting and exciting as my dream.

At the breakfast table Mom has left the Community Recreation Guide open on my placemat. She's used a yellow hi-liter to mark a gymnastics club. Gymnastics. Somehow running around indoors and wearing tights doesn't seem like real sports to me. Plus I know how I'll look in a leotard. There'll be no hiding it.

“It will be so good for your self-esteem. Why not try?” says Mom. She's got that pleading look that makes me feel all heavy inside. If I say no, I'll disappoint her. If I say yes I'm stuck doing something that isn't me. “What do you think, Tony? Don't you think Sylvie would be great at gymnastics?”

“I sure do,” says Dad, so fast that I know they've set the whole thing up. There's no hope, I'm sunk. Gymnastics it will be.

“Your dad can take you after school,” says Mom. “It'll be nice for the two of you to have something to do together.”

“Dad's going to take gymnastics with me?”

“No, Pumpkin. But he can drive you there and watch your class, then bring you home for dinner.”

I look at Dad. He's got this strange little wobbly smile on his face but he nods encouragingly at me.

It's a done deal, though I don't think he likes it any more than I do.

On the way to school, Nickers is at the gate waiting for me when I pull up on my bike. She stands still when I wind my skipping rope around her neck, and then goes sideways to the rail as easy as pie. I get my leg across her back and boost myself off the gate. I grab her mane and sit for a minute. I can feel her breathing through my legs; her sides go in and out. She's warm and soft and she smells like heaven. I take a deep breath for courage, then squeeze my calves against her and push forward with my bum, like I practiced with the pillows.

Nothing happens. Well, at least she doesn't move her feet. Instead she bends her neck around so her nose is on my toe. I pat her neck and she straightens out. “Oh, Nickers, I just want you to walk,” I tell her.

And she walks. This big moving animal underneath me is walking! It's nothing like my pony-riding dreams—I am lurching and sliding and we're only walking, not trotting and absolutely not galloping. “Oh my gawd,” I say, “how am I going to make you whoa?”

And she whoas.

And I have an idea.

“Walk,” I say.

And she walks.

“Whoa,” I say.

And she whoas.

“You understand English!” I say.

Nickers takes another sniff of my toe.

“Take me back to the gate,” I say.

Nickers straightens her neck then backs up. I think about what I said.

“Whoa.”

She stops.

“Back.”

She backs up.

“Holy cow!” I say.

Her ears waggle, but then she stops.

This is amazing. A horse that understands the English language. Who would have thought? This is enough excitement for me for one day, so I slip off her side, undo the skipping rope and run back to the gate for the carrot sticks. And Nickers trots up right behind me! She loves me!

I'm five minutes late for school. Mr. Brumby asks for an explanation and I can't think of anything. I'm sure not going to say anything about Nickers. Mr. Brumby says I'm flushed and my eyes look funny and I'm thinking that being sick might be a good excuse when Amber says I always look funny because of my ears. The whole class falls silent. I wish I could make a joke or that someone would laugh because the silence is like an acknowledgement that what she's said is true. I want to crawl under my desk and die but I can't. I'm trying to think about Nickers and make everything not bother me when Logan Losino lets out the loudest, longest fart I have ever heard in my life. Fortunately his desk is two rows away from mine. Everyone groans and screams until Mr. Brumby slaps the wooden pointer across his desk. Mr. Brumby still wants to send me to the nurse's office but I tell him I'm fine. I'm just fine. I am amazingly fine. I rode a horse.

I can't see Nickers after school because I have to go straight home so Dad can take me to gymnastics. This turns out to be okay though, because I'm the first one in the house and when I check the mail I find the new catalogue from Greenhawk Equestrian Supplies that I ordered for free from their website. I hide it under some Archie comics that my cousin Taylor gave me. Mom hates these comics, she says they are junk food for the mind, so I know she won't touch them and the catalogue will be safe there. Then Dad comes home and tells me to change my clothes. He says I can wear a sweatsuit, I don't have to wear Spandex for my first class.

Dad takes two calls on his BlackBerry while we're on the way to the rec center, something he wouldn't be allowed to do if Mom was there. She thinks it's not safe to drive and talk on the phone at the same time and Dad says if she didn't multi-task on the phone all the time no housework would get done. But I agree with Mom on this—there's not much chance of being hit by a speeding truck while talking on the phone and dusting—so without saying anything I give Dad's cell phone an evil stare and he puts it away but then he wants to know how school was today. He wants to know if I've got a boyfriend. These are things I don't like to talk about and he's usually not interested, so I know it's the long arm of Mom at work.

Ms. Hackney, the gymnastics instructor, says I can stroll around watching everybody and notice if anything in particular appeals to me. I recognize a few kids from school, but there's no one from my class. Some people are tumbling on mats, some are walking on the balance beam. There's a set of uneven parallel bars at the back of the gym that no one is using so I wander over. I feel more comfortable with fewer people around.

I look up at the tallest of the two bars and stretch, but it's out of reach. It's perfect.

I jump, grab the bar and hold on. My fingers barely make it around the bar. I lift myself up for a few seconds and rest my chin on the bar, adjust my grip then I hang down again until my palms sweat so much I lose my grasp. That's when my dad comes over, sent by Ms. Hackney, who insists that everyone must have a spotter.

I look at the lower bar.

“Hey, Dad, help me up here.”

“Do you really think? I mean, shouldn't you be learning by watching the other kids?”

“No, Dad, really. Help me here, lift me up, I want to hang from my knees.”

He stuffs his BlackBerry in a pocket and lifts me up so I get my knees hooked over the bar, then he lowers my shoulders until I'm hanging upside down.

“Now what?” he says.

“Nothing. It's perfect.” I can feel my face throbbing from all the blood running to my head. I let my hands hang down and my fingers brush the floor. I look at my dad, who is upside down now and standing on the ceiling.

Ms. Hackney slides in beside him. “Well, Sylvie, you've gravitated to a very challenging apparatus. Do you want to see what else you can do?”

“No, this is just fine,” I say, because it is.

“Would you like to try a flip over the bar?” I see her look at Dad who shrugs his shoulders.

“No. This is all I want to do.”

“Well maybe next time, no sense rushing things,” says Ms. Hackney.

“This is all I'll ever want to do,” I say, to be perfectly clear. I don't want any misunderstandings. I don't want anyone getting their hopes up that I'm going to turn into an Olympic gymnast. I want to hang and stretch. If they let me do this, I'll be fine.

“There's a lot more to gymnastics than hanging off a bar,” says Ms.Hackney. She doesn't sound pleased.

“Not for me,” I say.

Ms. Hackney turns to Dad and says, “She's a strong little thing—girls of her stature can do very well in gymnastics as long as they are sufficiently flexible. And I'd say Sylvie's as strong as some of the boys.”

Strong as a boy? Well I don't mind that as long as I don't smell like one.

They turn their backs to me and have a little confab. Ms. Hackney will be saying something like she'll work on me and I'll come around. My dad will say no, she won't come around, because he knows me. He's known me a long time. He's known me since I was born, and along with my mom he knows everything about me. Well, almost everything. There's one thing they don't know, and even though it's only one thing it's a big thing, and I think about it every single day.

It happened when I was five. I can still remember it crystal clear even though I'm now fourteen. I was in the kitchen at Auntie Sally's house, the one she rented before the one that she's in now. I was so short, the countertops were level with my eyeballs. Grandpa was with me, he was visiting from Saskatchewan and I was talking to him about getting a horse because Auntie Sally had acreage.

“Half an acre isn't really acreage, Pipsqueak,” he told me.

“They've already got it mostly fenced, we could close in that one bit below the compost pile and there'd be a paddock.”

“Well you've got a good point there. Too bad the city bylaws won't allow livestock in this neighborhood.”

“We'd have to tell them?”

“How long do you think you could hide a horse?”

The countertop was a sunny yellow colour with pale flecks and black seams at the edges. When I leaned against the lower cupboards the door handles dug into my back. I remember thinking that maybe I'd never have a pony. It was all I wanted, even then.

“I'll make you a deal,” said Grandpa. “When you grow up to be as tall as my shoulder, if you're still interested in horses, I'll buy you one.”

I checked his face and he was serious, he wasn't kidding around. Then I looked at his shoulder. It was a long way up there. A really, really long way. But still.

“Okay,” I said.

I didn't tell Mom or Dad. Any time I hint around about having a horse one day, Dad says where would you keep it, then talks about how expensive horses are and how equestrian sports are elitist, which I thought sounded pretty good until I looked up elitist in the dictionary and saw it meant a “socially superior group” which reminded me of Amber and Topaz. And Mom always makes the same comment about me being in a “horse-crazy stage”, as though it's another developmental stage and I'll grow out of it. But I know I won't. Not in a million years.

*

After dinner I try a couple of math problems then work on my pulley diagram for science class, which gives me an idea. I figure I probably won't be going back to gymnastics, but it has inspired me to investigate new stretching techniques. So I tie my two skipping ropes together, put a loop around my ankles, feed the line around the base of my bureau, across the room and around one of the feet of my bed. Then I lie in the middle of the floor, stretch my hands over my head, grab the loose end of the rope and pull. At first I'm afraid the bureau might topple over and crush me, which would be devastating for my parents, but it moves half an inch, then sticks. I feel the pull on my ankles at one end and a pull on my shoulders at the other and I am trying to figure out how to get the stretch down my back when Mom knocks and immediately pops her head into the room.

“Oh, hi, Mom,” I say, trying to sound natural.

For once Mom is stuck for words.

“I'm doing a science project,” I say. “About pulleys.”

“Okay,” says Mom. She doesn't look convinced. “But don't wrap anything around your neck.”

My neck! Of course, I should have thought of that, it would be a much better way of stretching my spine without dislocating my shoulders. My neck is pretty short to begin with. Maybe if I put a scarf around it for protection and then the skipping rope on top . . .

“Sylvia.” She uses her special tone. “Nothing around your neck.”

“Sure, Mom.”

Later that night, after I've gone to bed, I have to get up to use the bathroom and I see that lights are still on in the kitchen. I figure I might as well get a glass of water while I'm up but then I stop in the hallway when I hear Mom's and Dad's voices. They are talking very quietly so I know it has something to do with me. I slide down against the wall and sit on the floor.

Mom says, “There's an article in
Psychoanalyst Review
about girls and horses.”

“You're kidding,” says Dad.