Girl Runner Read Free

incremental. Which makes this girl’s arrival monumental.
    She is speaking—not to the nurse, but to me.
    “Coming?” she asks, as if in my wheeled chair I have some choice, some agency. She touches my hand again, her fingers sliding under mine, around mine, so lightly I only just register the pressure of her hold on me.
    I say to her, You remind me of someone. Come closer, I’ll whisper it.
    Fannie.
    Fannie is still so young. She’s stayed the same and I have not. But when she visits, her face always turned away from mine, hidden behind her hair, behind a shadow, I feel the girl in me, the years dissolving. I feel the comfort of her, my big sister, offering her hand.
    Coming, Aggie?
    She has been dead nearly a century, but she walks effortlessly across the undulations of my mind, hair loose, hips broad, apron bleached white.
    “Coming?” The girl’s touch brushes the skin on my wrist, like an offer, waiting for me.
    I slip my hand into hers.

2
Sisters and Brothers
    WE ’ RE ON THE MOVE , from stuffy room to antiseptic hall.
    A confiding tone from the nurse: “Do you know, you’re the first visitors she’s had since I started working here. It’s nice of you to come!” I register this tone often, spoken over my head. She pulled the bowl of soup down on her lap. She soiled the sheets. We found her wandering the hall, she could have fallen and broken something. Who knew she could still walk!
    Keep on talking. Just so long as I’m going somewhere, squeaking on rubber wheels away from the nagging television, the muffled room, the whistles and cackles, belches and groans. For a moment the chair is caught on the lip of the threshold, but a professional shove with the wrists has us over and out.
    I hear from my throat a chortle of excitement that comes out quite strangled. Quiet, old woman, I think. They’ve forgotten you’re here.
    We stall in the hall, lit by fluorescent tubes and smelling of disinfectant. The nurse won’t let me go just yet. She’s worried about that chortle.
    She’s saying, “If you sign your name here, and today’s date, and the time.”
    I could do with that information. What if I’ve had a birthday and I’m already 105? What if it’s past breakfast and no one’s spooned me my tea? What is the girl’s name? That might come in handy. I might be able to use that.
    “‘Kaley,’” says the nurse, reading it off the page. “That’s an unusual name.”
    “Not really,” the girl says.
    “I guess nothing’s unusual these days, ha-ha!” The nurse wants a person to like her, which, I could tell her, generally guarantees a person won’t.
    “Kaley,” says the girl. “It’s Celtic,” and we’re back to the name.
    Kaley. I hum the word inside my head. Kaley, like the leafy vegetable, bitter until the first frost and then virtually indestructible. Kaley, and the other one—there’s a second visitor, a boy—says he’s called Max. It’s the first he’s opened his mouth. The nurse doesn’t ask Max to sign the form. She doesn’t ask me either.
    We begin an elaborate exit ritual, not of my choosing. The tucking of the flannel blanket. The fixing of the belt around my midsection to prevent me from slipping out of the wheeled chair. More patting, more fixing, more fussing, more lifting and shifting of the sweater and of my hands. The nurse pulls a woollen hat down over my ears, bound to be unflattering. It already itches.
    The girl says, “Are we ready?”
    She adjusts the woollen hat, an unnecessary action that is nevertheless reassuring. Excellent. I feel the nurse relaxing. The woman will let us go, soon. She will let us go, together.
    As the girl leans into my line of sight, her face sharpens suddenly from dull blur to distinct blur. I would guess her hair to be coloured and not a natural shade of red. No one in my family had red hair, although Edith married a boy with red hair. Carson, that was his name. But their son came out dark, like most of us—all but me. Their