Born Weird

“That’s why you’re here, Angie. You must go and find them. Round all of them up and bring them here. All five of you must be in this room at 7:39 p.m. on April 20 precisely. At the moment of my death I will lift the curses.”

“Can’t you just lift mine now? If it’s a curse, the sooner the better, no?”

“Again with the sass! Angie, I have no control over these things. I didn’t consciously bestow these abilities. I can’t consciously remove them. I just know that at the moment of my death, when my heart is confronted with a now or never situation, it will see the damage these curses have inflicted and take them away.”

“I see,” Angie said. She looked down at her belly. She put both of her hands on the arms of her chair and stood. A blue plastic pitcher sat beside the phone on the bedside table. She filled a Styrofoam cup with water and took a drink.

“Did you hear me?” Grandmother Weird asked.

“Even the water smells like pine.”

“Look at me.”

“Hmmm?”

“You think I’ve lost my mind.”

“No. Not at all. It’s just big. Big news. I just need some time to absorb it, that’s all.”

“I see. Perhaps a demonstration then?”

“Not necessary.”

“There’s a marker in there,” Grandmother Weird said, pointing to the drawer in the bedside table. “Could you get it for me?”

Angie opened the drawer. She searched through it. Beneath several celebrity gossip magazines Angie found a black felt-tipped Magic Marker. She handed it over to her. Grandmother Weird took the cap off with her teeth and spit it out, sending it sailing through the air.

The instant the cap hit the floor, every light in the room dimmed by half. The television sets lost reception. Angie felt her grandmother’s cold, bony fingers encircle her wrist. She tried to pull away but the old woman’s grip was incredibly strong and she could not break it.

“Watch the little old ladies,” Grandmother said.

Angie looked up. The elderly woman closest to the window fell backwards, as if she’d been deboned. The machine beside that bed made a high-pitched whine. Grandmother Weird pressed the Magic Marker against the skin of Angie’s forearm and began to write. The lights dimmed further. The white-haired woman in the next bed collapsed. A second machine began making the high-pitched whine. A nurse ran into the room. Angie tried again to pry her grandmother’s fingers away. She still couldn’t. Grandmother Weird wrote a series of numbers on Angie’s skin. The lady in the bed closest fell backwards. A third machine whined. More nurses ran into the room.

“Stop it!” Angie yelled. “Stop this right now!”

Her grandmother did not look up. She wrote the last number of a ten-digit sequence. Then she let go of Angie’s wrist. The lights returned to full-strength. The televisions regained reception. The machines stopped making their high-pitched whines. The elderly women sat upright in their beds and looked around the room, dazed and frightened.

“Never doubt your elders, child.”

“Shark!” Angie yelled. She began to back out of Room 4-206. “You will never hold my baby. You will never see me again.”

“Yes I will,” Grandmother Weird said. She smiled broadly. She began to laugh. She laughed in the Tone.

Angie backed out into the hallway. Holding her belly she ran as fast as she could. She did not look back. By the time she’d reached the elevators, Angie had already forgiven her grandmother.

NINETY MINUTES AFTER FLEEING her grandmother’s hospital room Angie was scrubbing her forearm at a sink in the women’s washroom on the departures level of the Vancouver International Airport. She’d rebooked her flight from the back of the taxi she’d taken from the hospital. The only other woman in the bathroom stood at the hand dryer. Her pantsuit was unwrinkled. The diamonds in her ears shone. She pretended not to stare at Angie. Then the dryer shut off and she gave Angie a gentle look as she walked confidently away on her strappy high heels.

Angie looked in the mirror. The front of her white blouse was soaked. Her belly button bulged through the cotton. The ten-digit number remained perfectly legible on her red forearm. When she heard the final boarding call for flight AC117 from Vancouver to New York City, Angie turned off the tap, headed to the gate and boarded the plane.

At row 18 a large man was sitting in the aisle seat. A third of him spilt over the chair. His right arm had already claimed the middle armrest. He did not look up as Angie pushed her purse into the overhead compartment. She stood for several moments before he moved into the aisle and then she wedged herself into the window seat.

Her revenge was how often she had to pee.

Angie made her first trip to the bathroom shortly after takeoff. Her second was twenty minutes later. When she returned from her third visit, the large man had moved to the window.

“Touché,” he said as Angie lowered herself into the aisle seat.

“Thank you,” she replied.

An hour and forty minutes later Angie was in the washroom for the sixth time when the plane began to plummet. She grabbed the faucet with her left hand, cradled her belly with her right and pushed her bum against the door. Water splashed onto the front of her shirt, soaking it once more. She immediately realized that Veronica was a stupid, stupid name. She made a promise to both God and her unborn daughter to find a better one, should they survive.

The dive lasted three long seconds. When the plane levelled off Angie ran back to her seat. She fastened her seat belt, tightly. The large man beside her opened the plastic window shade. They both squinted. When their eyes had adjusted to the light they saw thick black smoke billowing from the plane’s far right engine.

“I wouldn’t worry. There are three others,” the man sitting beside her said. Then he wiggled into his chair, folded his hands over his chest and closed his eyes.

“Good afternoon,” said an authoritative voice from the speaker over top of Angie’s head. “This is your captain. Yes. We’re experiencing some … minor … technical difficulties. Nothing to worry about, folks. But we’re going to have to make an unscheduled stop. We should be landing in the … at the … Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport in about fifteen, seventeen minutes. We … ah … apologize for the inconvenience. We’ll be all right.”

It was the we’ll be all right that started the panic. There was a collective gasp. Angie’s breathing became shallow. Superstition took over and she began to believe that if she could just decide on the perfect name they really would be all right. Sarah, Rachael, Jenny, Candi, she thought, desperately. “Vanessa, Abigail, Helen, Franny,” she said out loud. Then the pressure overwhelmed her imagination and all she could come up with were random nouns. “Celery, Oboe, Loofah,” she muttered. “Garamond, Decanter, Frizzante, Pilates. Rolex, Evian, Dasani, Perriella.”

The plane began its descent, which was steep. It dipped forwards. It wobbled to the left and the right. Angie used both of her hands to clutch the armrest as she became convinced that they were all going to die a horrible fiery death.

Then she looked at her forearm and she instantly knew what had to be done. Unfastening her seat belt Angie stepped into the aisle.

“Sit down!” yelled a flight attendant.

“I’m saving us all!” Angie yelled back.

The overhead compartment squeaked as Angie opened it. Pushing back a suitcase that started to fall out, she grabbed her purse, sat back down and fished her phone out. Then Angie dialed the number that she hadn’t been able to wash away.

The plane jumped. The phone on the other end began to ring. The runway came into view. “Hold my hand!” she said to the man beside her. He opened his eyes and looked at Angie, blankly. “I’m pregnant and alone and frightened and you will hold my goddamn hand!”

Angie held her hand out. Her seatmate took it. He squeezed, tightly. The phone rang for a fourth time. The plane tilted to the right. Several passengers screamed. The phone rang again and then it was answered.

“I’ll do it!” Angie yelled. “I’ll get them. I’ll get all of them. I’ll bring them to you!”

The back tires hit the runway. The plane slowed. The front wheels touched down and the passengers applauded. Angie breathed out. She realized how tightly she was holding both the phone and the hand of the man in the seat beside her.

“I knew you’d come around,” Grandmother Weird said.

“Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Before we commit to anything …”

“I’d start with Lucy.”

“Well,” Angie said. She looked out the window and then she looked at her hand, which was still engulfed by the meaty palm of her seatmate, “I am in Winnipeg.”

ANGIE WEIRD REALLY WAS BORN in a hallway, and this is how it happened. On May 4, 1987, when her mother, Nicola, went into labour her father, Besnard, drove them to the hospital in his beloved 1947 maroon Maserati. Besnard had purchased the two-seater seventy-two hours before Angie’s birth. It wasn’t suited for city driving. Besnard wasn’t used to driving it. He stalled six times on the way to the hospital.

His sixth stall happened at the southeast corner of College and University in downtown Toronto. They were close enough to the hospital that Nicola could see it. She sat in the passenger seat, staring at it longingly. She stared at Mount Sinai Hospital in a way she hadn’t stared at her husband in quite some time.