Y: A Novel by Marjorie Celona Read Free Book Online Page B

home visit to make sure I’m okay. Her
     name is Bobbie, and she’s a great big woman who wears long gypsy skirts and has leathery
     red skin from fake tanning. She and Miranda drink coffee in the kitchen and talk about
     me while I pretend not to listen. Am I adjusting? Am I sleeping? Am I still crying
     out in thenight? Bobbie talks about the difficulties of raising a child with a “history,” one
     who might be “special needs.” She puts her hand on Miranda’s shoulder sometimes, as
     though she needs to be comforted. Later, she pads through the house, checking the
     smoke alarms and making sure there’s nothing poisonous lying around. She asks Miranda
     to put the Lysol on a higher shelf, “just in case.” Lastly, she comes into the living
     room and eases herself onto the floor, where she stares at me intensely and asks me
     questions about myself, about Lydia-Rose, about living with Miranda. I whisper that
     I am fine. I want to tell her that I think I really love Miranda, but I can’t yet
     find the courage.

    When Bobbie leaves, Miranda holds my hand and asks if there’s anything she can do
     to make me feel happy. She agrees to paint the bedroom pink when she next gets paid,
     and when I ask for a neon-pink bedspread, she buys dye and throws an old white one
     in the washing machine. When Lydia-Rose protests and accuses me of getting special
     treatment, I hear Miranda whisper to her that “at least she wasn’t rattled by such
     a stark beginning.” She expects her daughter to be fair, to be kind, to be nice to
     me.

    “Bleeder!” Lydia-Rose shrieks. It is six in the morning, a few weeks after I arrived,
     and she is in the twin bed across from me. She clutches her bloody nose and falls
     out of bed onto the floor, hitting her head on the edge of the bed frame. The cats
     stampede out of the room, outraged. I clutch my new pink bedspread and wait for further
     violence. But this is just the way Lydia-Rose is: everything with her is physical.
     When she’s angry or sad, she pushes or punches me and then her nose bleeds—huge rushes
     of blood that last an hour. She holds her head back while Miranda wads the Kleenex
     and presses it hard against her nose. Miranda tells me that Lydia-Rose has bled everywhere:
     the mall, the church, the grocery store. Concrete, tile bathrooms, hardwood floor—each
     surface absorbing the blood in a different way, the carpet in our bedroom forever
     stained.
    Once it stops, Miranda tames her daughter’s hair with a bristle brush and forces it
     into two long braids, the elastics ready to burst. Flipper and Scratchie groom each
     other on the floor, and Winkie is asleep on my bed, on top of my feet.
    At breakfast, Miranda talks and we fidget. The phone is busted and two guys from the
     phone company are busy ripping up the walls, drilling, pulling phone lines out of
     little cardboard boxes and then slinging them all over the house, creating a kind
     of spiderweb of white wires that beep and fizzle and spurt when they walk by. The
     men have some kind of thing attached to their pants that makes these little lines
     crazy.
    “When we lived on Saltspring,” Miranda begins over the noise of staple guns and all
     the beeping, “we were chased by a white bull. Lydia-Rose’s father and I were in our
     old minivan. We were going to visit friends and the drive was very long.”
    “What was I doing?” asks Lydia-Rose. Her voice is impatient, a whinny. I push my Froot
     Loops around, roll the soggy ones into balls with my fingers, and stack them like
     snowmen. Occasionally I reach down and put one into Winkie’s mouth.
    Miranda folds her hands in her lap. “You were napping in the backseat, sweetie.” She
     tries to salt her eggs but the salt is clumpy from moisture and won’t come out. She
     tries to work the pepper mill but it’s stuck, too. “Your father spotted the bull first,
     coming from the middle of a field—who knows what the bull was thinking, maybe