Born Weird Read Free Page A

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 knewwhat 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.”

A NGIE W EIRD 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.
    Besnard sat in the driver’s seat, trying to restart the engine. The car behind him began to honk. He sighed, deeply. The impending birth of