Skinny (20 page)
Sol takes the last flight to the roof two steps at a time and the door bangs open from the wind before he reaches it. I jump
after him, and at first we don't see anything except the yellow streaks of light in the sky and the weaving cars below us.
And then, there she is, moving like a giant worm in a wet blanket on the edge of the roof. Sol approaches her slowly.
She points to her chest and then opens her mouth but no sound comes out.
Sol picks Giselle up in the soaking blanket. She hugs his shoulders, looking at his face but not really seeing him.
"It's over, babe," he says quietly, tracing his fingers over her eyebrows.
She curls her legs over his arms, ready to be carried, while a soft rain falls on us.
. . .
At first they hooked her up to an IV, then attended to the external wounds—the scratches, the bruises, and the lung infection
from exposure—and then they got down to the rest of her. Giselle has pneumonia, and it doesn't look good.
Sol drives me home in the early morning and we sit in his hot car, parked in the driveway. He lights a cigarette, then plays
with the new pineapple air freshener he bought in the hospital gift shop.
When his cell rings he looks at the number and then puts his elbow on his half-open window. He clears his throat, as if he
is going to say something, but he doesn't. Having him next to me makes me feel sort of normal, sort of. And I feel that what
was between us before, a wire pulled taut almost breaking, is gone now, forever, at last.
Sol draws his fingers over his lips. Looking straight ahead, at our green garage, he says in a whisper, "How the hell did
she do that?"
"What?"
"How did she manage to cruise around downtown, get herself halfway across the city, and onto a roof, in a goddamn thunderstorm?"
He pauses to pitch his smoke out the window and turns to me. I think about how Giselle could waste a beautiful day inside,
studying, how she always liked eating the heel of the bread, how I could make her laugh all day if she was hungover, and how
she always did everything the hard way, never took shortcuts. Then I remember something Mom said to me once.
"People can do anything when they really want to die, Sol."
Organisms that cause pneumonia are often present in the normal respiratory tract, but decreased resistance can allow these
bacteria to grow unchecked, especially if immunocompromised patients are exposed to colds, flu, and emphysema.
—
You gettin' all that good juice you need?
She comes into my room at night, tapping at the intravenous, only now she's cowed and worn, without guile, without a plan.
I nod as she crawls in bed with me.
—
Don't be afraid.
I recoil from the cold air she lets in.
—
I'm not going to hurt you, I just wanted to say goodbye. To explain.
I try a smile, pushing my lips together till the sores in my mouth start bleeding again.
—
Good. Because I'm not even the badguy. G, they're trying to make
me the badguy out there.
It is the first time she has said my name, trying to win me over now, to her side. She hitches her thumbs back over her shoulders,
she pokes at the world, now it's full of recriminations, bloodlust, and injustice. The big
out-there-
world. The one I am hungry for today, at last.
—I know you're not bad, I never said you were.
I clear my throat, which feels like a blade ripping up through my lungs and into my neck.
She tries to smile against the swelling of her purple face but winces.
—
I thought you wanted out.
—I did.
I rear up on one arm to get some air, thinking we may have run out of it there on the bed. Suddenly it all dissipates in the
worst head rush I've ever had—all the cells fall away like small pieces of shattered bone. I see punctured arteries with splats
of blood washing out; the cicatrice torn and spinning.
I see my two stars erupt like satellites and begin to fall. Slowly, they descend, sinking into the earth's burnt core. The
nightmare of the inside turned out, the unravelling: exploding limbs, mangled flesh, cracked by the impact of bone on bone.
When I look up, the sky is filled with bright blue heartsacs impaled by fire. When I look down, I see my organs torn from
their holes.
—
This is what it's like. . .
A
lion-heart bursting. Entropy in reverse. It all gets messed up, the senses criss-crossed, a borderless synesthesia. A minimum
of images: I see her voice, a light on the wall, then shouts churn up into one colossal, unified skipping heartbeat, tiny
explosions heard from outer space.
—To die.
I finish her sentence, know that 1 will never be rid of her now, that I will eternally finish her thoughts.
And I don't know anything except that
—
I am not in love with anyone anymore.
Sol, Mom, Clive, and Agnes, who is chain-smoking, are all there. And Mr. Saleri is there. When I look up, I see Dad in Sol's
place, standing next to Mom. She's leaning against him slightly, and he's holding her arm, shivering in his thin flannel pyjamas,
bowing his head towards hers.
And Giselle is there, too, wearing a big black hat to protect her from the sun and a pink polka-dot dress I have never seen
before.
I look at her, all the way in the back. She winks, gives me a thumbs-up in her black-lace gloves, and when I look at the child-size
coffin in the ground and back at her, she's gone.
Then I walk away from them all.
I wobble on my black pumps on the wet ground and then kick them off and pitch them into some bushes. I start to run, the slit
ripping higher and higher on Giselle's luscious black dress until my legs are free, and brown earth and grass cover my toes.
I run over graves and thorns, flowers and ashes,
Beloved Son
of. . . 1968—1981 you beloved son of a bitch,
till there's blood and muck all over my feet. I push harder then, harder, aim for the impossible spaces between bushes. I
throw myself at trees, at headstones, like a human pinball in a graveyard machine. I bounce off death, off rock, off wood,
the sun in my mouth, a pain scorching my breath, laughing, my thighs huge and burning. I careen back onto pavement, onto the
orderly path of the living.
I fall then and roll down a hill lined with grey angels. I can hear the thud of footfalls behind me this time, boots striving
to catch up with me. I hear them but they can't catch me because I'm tearing, flying, leaping over crosses like high-jump
markers, landing in freshly dug graves, catching my dress and ripping it on branches.
I guess I'm screaming, too, although my voice is like the wind, too fast for sound. Still, there are those footsteps behind
me but I deke them out. I fool them, hundreds of them, falling behind the sound of rolling thunder. And if I can keep this
up, they won't ever catch me.
I'm too fast, too bloody. I'm on my second wind now.
In writing this book, I have consulted several sources in order to ensure the accuracy of medical terminology, surgical procedures,
and certain aspects of medical training. Some passages in
Skinny
are based on material from these sources, including:
Medical School: Getting in, Staying in, Staying Human
by Keith R. Ablow (Baltimore: Williams and Watkins, 1997) and
Principles
and Practice of Surgery,
2nd ed. by CD. Carter, A.P. Forrest, and LB. Macleod (Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 1991). For material on epilepsy, its
diagnosis and treatment, I have consulted The Epilepsy Project's
www.epilepsy.com.
For statistics and procedures regarding endometriosis, I have consulted Endometriosis.org,
www.endometriosis.org,
and the MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia, Medical Encyclopedia,
www.nlm.nim.gov.
Many thanks to my editors, Iris Tupholme and Siobhan Blessing, and my agent, Don Sedgwick, for their guidance, patience, and
outstanding editorship.
I would also like to acknowledge the enduring support of my family, friends, and community, whose love and faith enabled me
to write this book. In particular, I would like to thank Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall, Mary di Michele, and my parents, Peter
and Ibolya Kaslik, for their inspiration and heart.
IBI KASLIK
is a freelance writer and novelist. She has an MA in creative writing and lives in Toronto, Canada.
Skinny,
her first novel, was nominated for the Borders Original Voices Award and was short-listed for both the Amazon.ca/Books in
Canada First Novel Award and the Canadian Library Association's Young Adult Book Award.
Visit her Web site at www.ibikaslik.net.