Belly Up Read online

  “You go to sleep at like six o’clock. I stole your phone and texted Jack and the gang to set it up. Everyone deserves the hellscape that is a baby shower. And because I love you, we’re not playing pin the tail on the infant. Infant rentals are expensive, come to find out, and stealing them from the grocery store is a felony. It’s kind of unfair.”

  “Oh. I—oh. Okay. Thank you!”

  I smiled at Jack, who looked nervous. He kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other, glancing at his mom, glancing back at me.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey!”

  “Hope you don’t mind that we came. But since it’s for my kid, too, I thought—you know.”

  His mom grabbed his hand, her eyes going big in her pale face.

  “Hi, Sara,” she said. “You look beautiful. You’re glowing.”

  They looked kind of pathetic. It was like that scene in Gladiator when everyone was waiting for me to thumbs-up or thumbs-down them being there—thumbs-up, they were welcome. Thumbs-down, they’d be eaten by a pack of lions. Or Mormor. I’d probably pick the lions myself.

  I didn’t want them to feel that way around me or my kid. That wasn’t fair—not when they sincerely wanted to be part of the baby’s life, and that was a heck of a lot more than I had with my deadbeat dad. I did the only thing I could think to do and left Mom’s side to go to them, pulling them both into a hug that was seriously awkward with a beach ball–sized fetus between us.

  “Yeah! We’re family now, right? For Cass? It’s cool.”

  Jack’s mom was so relieved she started to cry.

  Outside of her blowing an accidental sob booger on my coat, it was a fantastic day.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Tuesday, February eighth was a day that would go down in infamy.

  It was the day I did not give birth to my kid. I thought I might but it was a big whopping nada on the reproduction front.

  The morning started like any other morning, meaning the alarm went off and I propelled myself from my nest of cast-off blankets and pillows, wishing I had a pulley system and a pair of work mules to haul me to my feet. I waddled my way to the bathroom, my gait more side to side than forward movement. I peed for what would probably be the first time of fifty that day. A noteworthy development was a weird, phlegm-like gob of stuff had passed out of me sometime during the night, not unlike a chunk of jellyfish. I’d seen more like it the day before. I was pretty sure it was my mucus plug, and losing that was totally normal. It meant the kid’s head was in the right place in my pelvis and my body no longer felt the need to hold everything inside.

  It was gross!

  Did I mention bodies are gross? Because they’re gross.

  My book—and Dr. Cardiff—had told me losing the plug was an indication that my system was doing what it was supposed to do in preparation for birth. It could happen awhile before actual labor, so I wasn’t really thinking things were imminent yet. I wasn’t due until the sixteenth, after all. Sure, I had nasty backaches that morning, but those had been around for months thanks to the weight gain in my midsection. And sure, I’d had cramping, but Braxton Hicks had been happening off and on for a couple of months. Those were weird practice contractions, where all the muscles in my midsection would tighten up for thirty seconds or so before releasing. My stomach would get super hard for the duration of the contraction, and then it would go back to normal.

  The thing was, my Braxton Hicks had never hurt all that bad. They were frequent, sure, but there’d never been pain. I had pain on Tuesday. It probably should have told me something was different, but again, all of the books—all of my talks with my doctor—said Braxton Hicks could hurt and that it was okay and normal. I didn’t push the panic button.

  What I’m getting at is, the movies make it look like you know you’re in labor immediately. The reality is a lot of the symptoms you have are symptoms you’ve been having throughout the third trimester, and the pre-labor signs look like a slight uptick in your everyday body aches and pains.

  Which is how I went to school when I was actually in labor.

  Senior year AP English is a slog most days. You’re not reading the most engaging material because public schools rarely believe in assigning material written by anyone actually alive. It’s Shakespeare and sonnets and Emily Dickinson and stuff that I could appreciate, but not really connect to. Weller had us digging through Hamlet. It wasn’t my favorite play, but it was better than Julius Caesar and Romeo & Juliet, and it wasn’t as racist as The Merchant of Venice, so I’d take it.

  Mark O’Hara was busy reading Hamlet’s part aloud to us, screwing up the pauses and rhythm of the iambic pentameter because some men liked to watch the world burn.

  Weller was visibly twitching.

  So was I, but it had nothing to do with Mark O’Hara and everything to do with the increasingly alarming muscle constriction happening in my midsection. It’d been going on from the time I woke up, through the ride to school and into class. Most cramping I could breathe through, as I’d been taught in the online class Devi and I took. But there was one—dear God, there was one where I saw Jesus. It started in my back and seemed to move around front, to where the baby rested.

  I inhaled sharply and squeaked.

  Mark O’Hara stopped murdering Hamlet. Every set of eyes in the room swung my way.

  I didn’t care. I was too busy gripping the table in front of me, my fingernails scouring the wood as a solid minute of contraction made breathing almost impossible.

  Leaf leaned into me, his concern obvious.

  “Are you okay?”

  I shook my head in the negative.

  “I think that’s enough Hamlet for today,” Weller’s voice rang out. She stood from behind her desk, all six feet of her, in her trusty red cardigan and woolen pants. She adjusted her glasses and scanned the room, knuckles balancing on her desktop. “You have a research paper due next week. You can take the next twenty-five minutes in the library gathering your research materials. Wikipedia is not allowed. Now go.”

  It took everyone a moment to get moving because they were ogling me. Weller barked out an, “Excuse me, did I not speak clearly enough?” and my classmates scrambled to get their things together, practically bolting for the door. I clutched at the table. The cramp passed, but I was terrified another one would come. Leaf’s hand was on the small of my back, rubbing in small circles. He knew about the backaches, had witnessed them firsthand. He went straight to what he knew worked best, and I adored him for it.

  I breathed deeply and braced as Weller approached. She had the ability to look down her nose at you from every angle. But for once, she seemed aware of it—she didn’t want to intimidate me. She crouched before my table. Her gaze swung over to Leaf. I was afraid that she’d banish him to the library with our classmates, but instead she said, “Why don’t you call her mother? I should probably send her to the nurse, but this is different, I think.”

  Weller, queen of the advanced placement demons, was again proving to be the most compassionate of my teachers.

  “Thank you,” I rasped.

  She reached across the table to take my hand. I waited for another cramp. The last one had been awful, like the worst charley horse ever, only in the wrong place. I worried if another came, I’d squeeze Weller’s fingers off. I told her as much, but she snorted and told me not to worry about it.

  “I had three babies. I’m tougher than I look.”

  Somehow, that didn’t surprise me.

  Leaf slipped my phone from my bag and dialed Mom at work. He paced back and forth as he talked to her, explaining what had happened and that Mrs. Weller had told him to call.

  “She’s on her way,” he said a moment later, slipping my phone into his back pocket. “Also, she said it’s rude to have your baby on the floor of the high school.”

  “...she would say that.
” I managed a smile and slumped into my seat, holding onto Weller with one hand, rubbing my distended midsection with the other. “It could just be Braxton Hicks, too. They like to fake you out, but they’ve never been like this before.”

  “It could, but better safe than sorry,” Weller said. “Leaf, go get her a damp paper towel from the restroom? Do you have anything you need in your locker, Sara?”

  I shook my head. Leaf scampered off to do as he was told, appearing a few minutes later with a sopping wet towel he had to wring out over the garbage before applying to my forehead.

  “You’re so red.” He dabbed at my cheeks with the paper towel. It felt amazing on my skin, and I had the urge to douse my whole body in cold water. I needed a nice, cool pool to walk into.

  In February.

  Apparently.

  “Oh. I’m okay.” I paused, slurping in a breath. “I’ll be okay.”

  If I kept telling myself that, I’d eventually believe it.

  I’ll be okay.

  I’ll be okay.

  I’ll be ok—

  Another contraction hit.

  * * *

  “The only thing ruder than having the baby on the floor of your high school is having it in my car,” Mom announced. “If your water breaks on my upholstery, I’m going to be hella mad.”

  “Hella?” I asked, trying to get comfortable in my seat and failing. I felt swollen, like a balloon that ought to be floated over the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Worse, I felt like I was in imminent danger of bursting. “You’re not from the bay, Ma.”

  “No, but I watched a lot of South Park when I was pregnant with you. Maybe that’s why you’re like this. Let’s blame South Park.”

  She was trying to distract me by cracking jokes. It worked only to a point. Leaf had stayed at school because he had to—Mom didn’t have the ability to dismiss him from class, nor was it time to. Even if it was for-realsies labor, it’d be hours yet unless I was one of those freak-show moms who managed a three-hours-and-done delivery.

  Honestly? I would have liked to have been that freak-show mom.

  My reality was much, much longer and drawn out. Three hours would have been divine.

  Mom pulled into the driveway. She must have called Mormor in advance to warn her that something was amiss, because she was standing sentry by the door when we arrived. The moment Mom opened the car door she swooped in, tutting and circling like a silver mother hawk.

  “Are we going to the hospital? I packed her a bag. We should call Devorah so her coach is there.”

  “Nope,” Mom said, sounding emphatic so Mormor didn’t bulldoze her. “Dr. Cardiff said five minutes between contractions, and then we go. We’re not there yet. There’ve been a total of...three, Sara?”

  “Four,” I said, the memory of the last one in the car enough to make me wince.

  “How close together are they?”

  “Ten minutes apart. About,” I said.

  “Hmm. I see.” Mormor paused. “We’re sure she shouldn’t go to the hospital yet?”

  My mother helped me up the stairs of the front porch.

  “We’re sure, Mom.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Mormor hustled along behind us. “Do you want anything to eat or drink, Sara?”

  “Nope.” I wanted a shower. A cold one. I said as much, and Mom took me upstairs to help me undress. I didn’t feel nearly as weird or as self-conscious as I normally would being naked in front of her, and it made me think back to what she said about not caring about which doctor was helping me, only that a doctor was helping me. It seemed a little more believable, particularly as I called for my mom to come back into the bathroom when another contraction hit, this one hard enough that my eyes watered and I clawed at the side of the bathroom stall.

  Mom held me up, climbing into the shower with me and drenching her work clothes in the process. She toweled me off. She helped me get dressed in comfortable pajama pants and a soft top.

  She walked me around the house, slowly, as we waited to see what was happening.

  She got me cold water to drink.

  She took me to the bathroom to pee, standing outside the door the whole time to ask if I was okay. More of the jellyfish stuff had come out, and I told her so, and she announced what we were all suspecting.

  The baby was coming. Not yet, but she was coming.

  Cass-watch was officially on.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  It is a truth universally accepted by New Englanders that whenever is the least convenient time for New England to dump a bunch of snow on your head, it will do so. We’d had a season of nothing up to that point, only dustings and cold weather, but God had a sense of humor and decided what my pregnancy needed at the zero hour was a gosh-darned blizzard.

  Eff snow.

  Eff snow forever.

  Eight inches in three hours happened right off the bat, with more accumulation expected over the course of the night. It messed up a lot of things, namely Devi and Leaf coming to see me at Mormor’s. I was okay, my grandmother and mother were there to see to my needs, but I would have liked my boyfriend and my bestie. I would have liked Leaf’s soft words and Devi’s reassurances, like she’d learned in our online classes.

  I got... Mormor squawking in panicked Swedish before going out to ride her snowblower around the driveway every hour.

  “She’s like the Wicked Witch out there,” Mom said. “Just substitute the broom for a snowblower and turn her green and you’ve got an eerie likeness.”

  “She’s making sure we can get out of the driveway,” I said. I was tired. I was in pain. My contractions were about six minutes apart. I didn’t have a lot of good humor to throw Mom’s way. “God, my back is killing me.”

  “I’m sorry, baby girl. I know it sucks. But the good news is, the hormones will kick in soon and all of this will seem like a distant dream afterward.” Mom came over to sit on the ottoman, pulling my socked feet into her lap and rubbing my soles. “That’s true, you know. Labor is unpleasant, but our brains do chemical whammies on us so we’re willing to go through it again in the name of the species not dying out.”

  “I’m never going to forget this,” I promised.

  “You say that now, but who knows.”

  Mom winked.

  She’d changed out of her wet work clothes into a pair of black leggings and a big sweater, a pair of snow boots on her feet for the inevitable and unenviable trek to the hospital. It was only twenty minutes to get there, but considering the road conditions and the scarcity of sand trucks out in Mormor’s neighborhood, it’d take at least double that, which is why Mom said we’d head over when my contractions were five and a half minutes apart.

  So, soon.

  We’d be leaving soon.

  I looked out the window from my position on the couch. The snow had gathered in the corners of the windowpanes. It was flurrying so hard, I couldn’t see Mormor despite her winter coat being an eye-stabbing bright pink with reflective striping along the seams.

  “What if we can’t get there?” I asked in a whisper.

  “Four-wheel drive, poppet. We’ll get there. You texted Jack?”

  “Yeah. I texted everybody.”

  “Good.”

  Mom had been the one to call Dr. Cardiff, who reassured Mom she lived close to the hospital and for me not to fret—she’d be available. I clung to that knowledge; I was getting scared. More scared than I’d ever been in my life, thanks to the pain and uncertainty. It all seemed so overwhelming suddenly, like all of those classes, all of those meetings with counselors seemed to have been for nothing. I cried about it, and my mom held me tight, telling me in her softest, sweetest voice that she loved me and wouldn’t let anything happen to me.

  It helped. But what helped the most was Leaf.

  The contractions were at a steady five
and a half minutes at 11:00 p.m. I texted Leaf to tell him we were packing up the car, that I’d be sure to message him when I got to the hospital to let him know I was safe. He’d kept in touch with me all day, relaying messages from Erin and Morgan that they were pulling for me, too. His frustration that he couldn’t be there was evident, but the snow had come on strong, and no one in their right mind would jump on the roads in that storm. Mr. Leon had been sympathetic but firm that Leaf was staying home until it was safer to travel.

  It wasn’t ideal.

  So instead, right before I was supposed to leave the house, he FaceTimed me on his phone. I heard the telltale tones and picked up, hoping I didn’t look like a sweaty ham, but totally aware that I looked like a sweaty ham. Labor uglied you up right quick.

  “Hey, you,” he said, his voice low. “Dad’s off tonight. Don’t want him to hear me on the phone so late. I think he’d understand, but... Parents, you know?”

  “Hey, you. We’re heading out,” I said. “Mom’s getting my coat.”

  “I know.” He smiled and moved his phone super close to his face, so all I could see was his eyes. “I just thought I should tell you something before you go.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you. You are amazing. You will be amazing. Your daughter will be amazing. And I am so excited to meet her tomorrow.”

  He’d never said it outright before. Not the L word. And I never in a zillion years would have thought he’d say it to me as I was about to go launch a kid out of my wahoo, and yet somehow, it was the perfect time. It was exactly when I needed to hear it. We’d been dating for months, we’d beaten around the bush by saying how much we liked each other, how good spending time together was. We’d said, “I love spending time with you.”

  Never “I love you.”

  Knowing Leaf, knowing how seriously he took sex and commitment, I knew he meant it. He wouldn’t have thrown it out willy-nilly at the six-month mark just to placate me so I didn’t freak out about having the kid I’d known was coming for almost a year. He’d saved it for the exact right moment—when I could swaddle my frantic rabbit heart in it and find peace when no peace wanted to be found.