Belly Up Read online

  That stopped me in my tracks. “...wait. You mean by herself?”

  Mormor nodded. “Mmm. She was desperate to get away from a family that didn’t want her, and they were desperate to be rid of her, so she got on a boat and immigrated. There were Swedish colonies in Maine, and opportunities for work. Astridh found housing with some other young women and worked at a shoe factory until she met and married my grandfather.”

  Mormor had never talked about any of that, and my initial disinterest gave way to a tremendous amount of respect for a woman I’d never gotten the chance to meet. “Wow, great-grandma times a billion was badass.”

  Mormor’s lips twitched. “Yes, she was. Now then, why would I tell you about her now? You’re a smart girl. Be smart for me.”

  “Because she was fearless and I should be fearless?” Admittedly, it was more a question than an answer, but after the day I’d had, I wasn’t super willing to play games with Mormor. I didn’t have a lot of gas left in my care tank.

  “Not quite.” Mormor shook her head. “She was terrified, and rightfully so. New place, new people. They didn’t send her with money or valuables. She showed up to this country with the clothes on her back. No, the reason I tell you this is she got through her ordeal because of her community. She found her people. They took her in when she came here. They housed her, fed her, clothed her, found her work. They were the only people who understood what she’d gone through and what she’d need to prosper here.”

  Mormor looked at me pointedly.

  I looked down at my cookie.

  “I have you and Mom. And Devi,” I said. I sounded petulant. My bottom lip was probably so pouty it protruded six feet from my face.

  Mormor was unmoved.

  “And none of us are going through what you’re going through. Your mother was pregnant twenty years ago. Times have changed. We can empathize, but these are kids living your reality right now.” She tapped the table and stood up to go back to her overachiever dish-washing routine. A moment later, her back still to me, she said, “I would consider the program, Serendipity. It doesn’t sound like such a terrible idea to me.”

  My reply was to grunt and eat another cookie.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “I still think it’s a great idea.”

  Those words, said by my mother over dinner about the Saturday morning teen-mom thing, were Brutus-on-Julius-Caesar-level betrayal. I gawked at her over my meatballs, her knife twisting between my shoulder blades.

  “Seriously? You want me to go to preggo patty-cake meetings?”

  “Mormor makes a great point,” Mom said. “We had kids young, but it was different back then. Social media bullying, cell phones, networking—we didn’t have any of that to deal with. This program will know how to navigate that stuff. Plus, there will be counselors you can talk to about things you’re not comfortable talking to us about. Like gross biology stuff.”

  “I have Devi to talk to when I’m freaking out,” I insisted.

  “What does Devi know about delivering a baby?” Mormor asked. “Nothing. She hasn’t done it. These people will educate you on the important things.”

  “Like the pooping on the delivery table thing,” Mom said.

  “...excuse me?” I looked down at my meatballs with gravy. I looked back at my mother. “Say what now?”

  “Later,” Mormor chided my mother.

  “Later? Why later? Oh, God. What?” I looked between them. They were smiling at one another, like they were in on an I’ve-spewed-writhing-life-from-my-loins-and-you-haven’t-yet power kick.

  “It’s not appropriate dinner conversation,” my mother warbled, her bottom lip quivering.

  “Okay, but you don’t get to just drop that bomb—”

  “Oh, it’s a bomb alright,” my mother murmured.

  That was it. Both of them gave up on the pretense of not being wildly entertained by my poop trauma. Mom burst into laughter—big peals that bounced off the walls and ceiling to fill the room while my stoic, usually dour grandmother tittered into her napkin. Instead of making actual noise, she pretended to cough, but I knew what was up. I knew whose team she was on.

  “It’s totally natural,” Mom managed. “Everyone does it. Almost. There’s a lot of pressure down there.”

  Mormor pointed at my mother, nodded in agreement, but refused to look at me, too dignified to indulge such base humor.

  Except she wasn’t at all. She was laughing so hard, her shoulders were shaking.

  I’m onto you, old lady.

  “No,” I said.

  Mom quirked a blond brow. “No what?”

  “NO, I REFUSE. I AM NOT POOPING ON THE DELIVERY TABLE.”

  “Oh! She refuses! Yes, okay. Well, you refuse, Sara. That’ll do something, I’m sure,” Mom said, stuffing meatballs into her mouth and smiling. I could see them there, smeared on her teeth, all brown and gooey.

  “I’ll talk to Dr. Cardiff at the next appointment,” I said. “And you look like you ate poop, just so you know. I hope you’re happy now.”

  “Mmmm. Delicious. I think I’ll have more.”

  She stuffed another meatball into her face.

  Disgusted, I grabbed my plate and stood to leave the dinner table. Mom reached for my elbow and Mormor pointed at my chair.

  “Sit, please. I’m sorry.” Mom dashed gravy off her bottom lip and got up to give me an awkward plate-between-us half hug. “We’re being awful. Please stay?”

  “Okay fine, but I don’t want to hear the word poop from you again. Now or possibly ever.” I took my seat and dug into my meatballs. In the wake of our conversation, I should have been way more disgusted about the food’s sloppy brown appearance, but I was hungry, and Swedish meatballs are delicious, so down the hatch they went.

  “When’s your next doctor’s visit?” Mormor asked, steering the conversation ship into safer waters.

  Well, safer-ish waters. It got choppy fast.

  “It’s coming up, I think?”

  Mom nodded. “Friday. Hopefully sprout will cooperate and we can gender them.”

  “Oh, good. I told my gardening club I think it’s a girl, so let’s see if I’m right.” Mormor looked too smug, and I had visions of those over-the-top gender-reveal parties with people shooting colorful exploding canisters. The idea of it bugged me, and I was afraid my grandmother, in her Larssen pride, would bake forty billion blue or pink cupcakes post sonogram to celebrate.

  “We’re not going to make this a big deal, right?” I eyeballed them. “I’d prefer not to.”

  “What do you mean by big deal?” Mormor gave me a not altogether friendly look.

  “I wanna keep this chill. No parties, no colorful cakes, or pink or blue confetti.”

  “Why?” she demanded.

  I frowned. “Because I think it’s weird to celebrate genitalia.”

  Mormor looked mutinous, which usually prefaced aerial shoes and squawking, so Mom sprung into action, her hand snapping out to grab Mormor’s bicep and holding tight. “Wait, Ma. Can you explain, Sara? I don’t think we’re catching your drift.”

  I didn’t want to explain, particularly not with Mormor looking at me like she wanted to pummel me with the meatball dish, but I did because I’d opened up that can of worms. Might as well own all of its wormy goodness.

  “Okay, so Morgan—” Saying Morgan’s name made me tense up because I’d liked her, a lot, and what had happened hurt, but I cleared my throat and pressed on. “Morgan’s a girl. If her parents had one of those parties, they’d have popped a blue canister or eaten a blue cake. But she’s a girl. Those parties celebrate dicks and vag, not people.”

  “We don’t say dick at the dinner table,” Mormor snapped.

  “Can the language, Sara, but I get what you’re saying.” Mom looked over at Mormor. “We can respect that reasoning, right, Ma?”


  “Mmm.” Mormor shook off my mother and took the dinner plates to the sink, her back to us. Her earlier good mood had evaporated all because I’d suggested she shouldn’t make cupcakes.

  Screw today.

  “I’m going to head upstairs,” I announced. “Unless you want my help cleaning up?”

  Mormor didn’t answer me, which meant the silent treatment was back in effect. Mom rolled her eyes. She got up from the table and walked me to the stairs, and then up the stairs, tagging along behind me. When I ducked into my room, she ducked in with me and closed the door behind her.

  “She’ll get over it,” she said.

  “I know. She’s old and set in her ways.” I plopped on my bed and grabbed my phone from the end table. Devi had texted me, which was a relief. I’d sent her a message after school to complain about Leaf and company but she’d been busy at cheerleading practice.

  “Yep, and it’s no excuse, but you’re probably not going to change her mind. You gave her a fair explanation, though. If she chooses to ignore it, that’s on her, not you, but it’d be really weird if she threw a gender-reveal party and neither baby nor Mom were there. You’ve got her by the short and curlies, kiddo.”

  I was about to start texting Devi, but Mom sat on the end of my bed and plucked the phone from my hands. I didn’t want mother-daughter bonding time, not after everything I’d been through that day, but it seemed like I’d been overruled.

  “Are you okay?” Mom asked. “Like, for real. Mrs. Wong called me at work convinced you were going to drop out. I told her you wouldn’t make that decision without me. I wasn’t talking out of my butt, was I?”

  “No? No.” I shook my head. “I’ll finish. I’m just pissed that my new friends outed me. I’m pissed that I spent lunch in Mrs. Wong’s office and then had to run from class to class so people wouldn’t stop me in the hall to get the scoop. I’m pissed I had to avoid eye contact with everyone or I’d see everyone staring at me. I’m pissed I don’t know stuff about what’s going to happen to me and my body, and about this Saturday program thing, and at Mormor. I’m just... I’m mad.”

  Mom nodded and reached out to pat my stomach through my pants, her palm rubbing over it in circles. It felt nice, and a microscopic amount of tension eased out of me. “Pissed is better than sad, but pissed can become sad. You know I’m here. I’m listening. I don’t want you to do the Saturday program if it’s going to make you unhappy. That said, I don’t see the harm in trying it for a couple weeks. Say, three weeks. And if that sucks, whatever. I won’t bring it up again. What do you think?”

  I thought it sounded like a nuisance, but she was being reasonable and it was hard to argue with reasonable, particularly when you were tired and miserable and wanted her to go away.

  “Yeah, sure, okay,” I said.

  “Alright! Cool. I’ll call Mrs. Wong and let her know. Maybe she’ll stop panicking. She was really worked up.”

  So was I when I was in her office, I thought, but I didn’t say it because saying it would encourage more dialogue and I was dialogued out. Mom leaned over me and pressed a kiss to my forehead, her pale hair sliding past my face. I forced a smile for her and she turned for the door. Just before she left, she paused and pulled her silk short-sleeve shirt aside to show me a circular patch on her upper arm. It took me a minute to recognize it as a nicotine patch.

  “I’m listening,” she repeated. “Seriously.”

  Before I could answer, she stepped outside and closed the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  By the time I got to texting Devi, I was tired of talking about my day. I’d shown my butt to Mrs. Wong, Mormor and Mom, in that order. A fourth set of ears wasn’t going to make me feel better. It was beating a dead horse with a broom immediately after you’d beaten it with a stick.

  I kept the conversation brief.

  Devi’s ever-loyal response was, “I hope they get eaten by marmots.”

  I kept her around for a reason.

  The constant fatigue of incubating a human plus the emotional fatigue of existing meant I went to bed doing half of my homework and leaving the rest to the YOLO gods. Somehow, despite ten hours of sleep, I was still dragging the next morning. Complicating it was the fact that I simply did not want to go to school and face more of my classmates’ rubbernecking about my pregnancy. Staying home was tempting, but I was afraid if I did that, Mrs. Wong would send out a SWAT team to find me.

  I pulled on a pair of leggings and a tank top before shouldering into a red-and-black-checked flannel that didn’t button quite how I wanted it to anymore so I just left it open. Combat boots, a quick brush of the hair, a clip and I was downstairs foraging for food.

  I was awaiting the pop of the toaster when something significant occurred to me.

  It was my first morning without morning sickness.

  “Heeeeey, thanks for not making me wanna paint the world with barf,” I said to my stomach. In response, the passenger yowled for sustenance, so a bagel in half the bites it ought to have taken and I was off to the pit of despair known as school. My heart raced as I approached the front double doors, my shoulders so tense I trembled, but a few long, deep breaths and I forged ahead, wearing my very best “Just Don’t” face, which was really just me borrowing Mormor’s 24/7 resting bitch face. It came in handy every once in a while.

  Once again, I navigated the gauntlet of horrified-slash-curious classmates, managing to dodge four conversations with kids who’d collectively talked to me for six seconds total since I’d started at Stonington but who suddenly wanted to be my closest confidantes. It seemed everyone wanted “the scoop.”

  What they got was a scoop full of nothin’.

  Lunchtime, to maintain whatever chill I still had, I snuck off to the library. No one was supposed to bring food or drink in there, but a quiet inquiry to Mrs. Wong about needing refuge from my circling classmates and she’d called in a favor to the librarian. Five minutes later, I had a nice table by a sign that read Periodicals, except there were no periodicals, just computers lined up on desks against the wall. It was chicken salad and an ebook on my cell phone and a whole lot of much-needed peace and quiet.

  Until Leaf, Morgan and Erin showed up.

  They didn’t come immediately, probably because they were hunting me through the school like a pack of hounds, but a few minutes into my lunch, they appeared, backpacks strapped to their backs. Morgan and Erin were shoulder to shoulder, frowning at me, Morgan’s crazy orange hair slicked up to stand on end, Erin plain-faced with no makeup in a dress reminiscent of Wednesday Addams. Looming in the back, Leaf had his hands in his jeans pockets while he stared at the industrial carpet beneath his boots.

  I blinked at them, unimpressed. My tongue lashed out to rid my lower lip of chicken salad smear.

  “It’s my fault,” Morgan started, stepping away from Erin’s side to whirl a chair around so she could straddle it, her lean arms laid across the chair back. “I’m really, really sorry. After you left, Leaf told me what happened and I went in to tell Erin. My parents had come home. My mom overheard me. She’s friends with half the neighborhood, so then they knew, and it went from there. I wasn’t careful, but I promise I didn’t tell anyone other than Erin. I’m just loud and stupid.”

  “And I didn’t say anything, I promise,” Erin said. “Like, I’ll swear on my cat and I really love my cat.”

  You really love your cat?

  Okay, weird thing to swear on but I guess I get the point.

  I sighed and put my phone aside, looking from Morgan to Erin and back again. “You guys screwed me. I know you didn’t mean to, but—”

  “I know, and I’m really, really sorry. But I think you’re cool and I just—I’d like to fix this? I’ll crotch punch anyone who gives you shit about it, I swear. Crap. Sorry.” Morgan glanced over her shoulder to see if the librarian had overheard, but Mr. Chekowitz was busy
reshelving books across the room. Morgan turned back my way. “I really don’t like to hurt my friends, and I’d like to think you’re my friend? I’m serious about the crotch punching for anyone who messes with you.”

  Thanks, I think?

  “I feel awful,” Leaf murmured. When he looked at me, it was with the puppy-dog sad eyes. Aaron used to do that to make me less mad, like if I felt sorry enough for him, I could push my upset away and focus on what really mattered in the situation, which were his guilty feelings. I must have scowled making that parallel because Leaf took a step back and cleared his throat.

  Maybe he’s being sincere?

  Or maybe I’m being an idiot because I caught an easy crush.

  “Leaf likes you,” Morgan blurted.

  “Morgan!” Leaf barked at her and shook his head, his brow knitting. “Leave it alone.”

  “Dude, I may have ruined everything for you and that sucks.” She looked from him back to me. “So. Yeah. He likes you and don’t blame him for me being a jerk. I pushed him into telling me. I’m a crap friend on two accounts.”

  “Three,” Erin corrected. “You just totally outed him to the girl he likes.”

  “Okay, fine, three, but if it makes anything better, it was worth it.” Morgan got up from her seat to stand in front of Leaf, her back now to me. She was tall, but he was taller, and they stared at one another. “She’s cool. I’m sorry to screw that up, man.”

  Leaf rolled his head back. He looked tired and stressed and pretty miserable. When he didn’t say anything, Morgan reached for Erin’s hand and tugged her along out of the library, both of them mumbling goodbyes. That left me with a guilty-looking Rom who couldn’t quite look me in the eye.

  Likes you, Morgan said.

  Not liked. Likes.

  Maybe...

  Uggggh. Why is this so hard?

  “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say beyond I’m sorry, I broke your trust and I won’t ever do it again,” Leaf said. He gestured at the chair across from me that Morgan had just vacated—it was a question, to see if I’d welcome his company. I nodded. He shucked his backpack and turned the chair back around to sprawl, or try to sprawl, a big, heavy guy in a plastic wreck of a seat shifting his weight as he tried to get comfortable. He ran a hand down his face and then through his hair, tugging on his black ponytail. “She’s not lying. I do like you. This is so uncomfortable.”