Belly Up Page 24

  “I love you, too,” I blurted before the tears started. “So much. I love you, Leaf.”

  “Go, be excellent for me.” He kissed the camera. “I love you.”

  * * *

  An hour and twenty minutes in a car with Mom clenching on the steering wheel like she wanted to strangle it, with Mormor griping about how she drove in snow, with me in the back seat breathing through increasingly painful contractions.

  This was not the Larssens at their best.

  “Watch out for the stop sign,” Mormor said.

  “Ma.”

  Mom had that warning voice—the one that suggested she’d bake someone into a pie if she had to.

  “Brake now so you have time to slide,” Mormor said.

  “Ma!”

  “Can the two of you knock it off?” I growled from the back seat, both of my hands clasped on my stomach. “I don’t need this right now.”

  “You are upsetting Serendipity. Hush, Astrid.”

  I stared at the back of Mormor’s head, hoping it would spontaneously combust or maybe catch fire, just for a little while. I loved her, but she was obtuse sometimes.

  Okay, like half the time.

  “We’re almost there, kiddo,” Mom assured me. She’d said it fifty times over the course of the quasi-epic journey. I officially had trust issues. Every time I looked out the window, I just saw snow, some more snow and a little more snow after that. I couldn’t tell where we were—only the dulcet tones of the GPS with its crisp British accent kept us on course.

  “She sounds smug,” Mormor said after the directions told us to take a left. “Why do British people sound smug?”

  “Why do Swedish people sound like that Muppet?” Mom asked.

  “Excuse me! I will have you know—”

  “STOP. TALKING!” Rarely did I raise my voice to the women in my family. Even less rare did they listen. In that minute? They stopped talking. They went stone silent, and the last five minutes of the car ride became so much more bearable, it wasn’t even funny.

  Mom pulled Mormor’s SUV up to the double doors of the hospital. Mormor grabbed my bag and helped me hobble inside. I sat down while Mormor went to talk to the front desk. I was so focused on waiting for my next contraction I didn’t see Devi across the waiting room.

  I heard her, though.

  “SARA. YES. YOU’RE HERE. OKAY.”

  I looked up. There she was, resplendent in forty-five layers of winter clothes and silver snow boots that looked more like moon boots than anything. Her father stood behind her in his black woolen coat and a ridiculous-looking hat with a fuzzy ball on top. Beside him was a police officer with a mustache holding a cup of coffee in his gloved hand.

  “Dad called in a favor to get me here,” Devi said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. “You don’t know exciting until you’re in a cruiser in a foot of snow going too fast to get to the hospital. That was better than a roller coaster. I think I’m going to puke.”

  “Don’t puke on me, please. I am so...so glad you’re here,” I said, taking the fierce hug she offered and burying my face in her neck. She smelled like Devi always smelled—like flowers and soap and all things good. It was another comfort I hadn’t known I needed until I had it. “So, so glad.”

  “Same, wifey. Same. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “You nearly did,” I said.

  “Well, yeah. Okay, sure, but that’s on the blizzard not on me. How are you feeling?”

  “Ehhhhh,” I said, warily watching the clock. I was due for another contraction. I dreaded it because the pain was amping up. I eyeballed the woman at the counter who was taking her sweet time addressing Mormor.

  At least I knew Mormor wouldn’t allow the situation to continue long. Her fingers were already tapping on the countertop.

  “My doctor supposedly is making it in, so that’s good. I ju—” I didn’t get to keep the thought. The next pain hit and it was a doozy, making me moan out loud and lean forward in my chair, my fingers clasping my pajama’d knees. Devi sprang into action, just like we’d seen on the video, using the cadence of her voice to help me focus, to help me breathe through it. She put her hand on my forehead, not because she was checking me for fever, but because she was ice cold from being outside and she knew it’d feel good.

  “You got this, Sara. You got this,” she crooned.

  I nodded and waited for the cramping to stop. Devi watched the clock. It seemed interminable, but by the time I flopped back into my chair, my heart in my throat, she smiled at me. “Fifty seconds. You’re getting close, girl.” She paused. “And I won’t even hold it against you.”

  “Hold what against me?” I managed, watching a nurse coming my way with a wheelchair and Mormor at her side.

  “I can’t puke on you, but you can break your water all over my shoes? How’s that fair?”

  I looked down.

  I’d wet my pants.

  And hers.

  “Oh, crap,” I whispered.

  “Yeah.” Devi gripped my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Yeaaaaah.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Wednesday the tenth of February, before my eighteenth birthday, I became a mom.

  There are things I could tell you about the thirty-six hours it took to have my kid that’d possibly scar you for life. I could talk about walking around the hospital literally for miles hooked up to an IV pole, my mom, my best friend and my grandmother taking turns chatting my ear off to keep me entertained while I awaited the next round of pain. I could talk about hours of nausea and the relief of cup after cup of ice chips. I could talk about alternating between riding out contractions on my hands and knees because my back hurt that badly, to lying on my side in a hospital bed, a fetal monitor hooked up to me so they could watch Cass’s heartbeat and, eventually, issue my epidural so I hurt as little as possible.

  I could talk about nurses checking on my dilation and saying encouraging things that were lost to the discomfort and whirlwind of giving birth. I could talk about exhaustion—not just mine, but my family’s and Devi’s, too, because Tuesday became Wednesday and night became day.

  But I won’t go too far into any of that. Suffice to say, Mom was right. You care about a lot less than you think you will when you’re in the moment, launching life from your loins. There was no dignity and I didn’t care. I just wanted to get through it for me and my kid.

  What I will tell you is that at 3:03 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon, my feet in stirrups, Dr. Cardiff standing before me in a puffy mushroom-top hat and with a bunch of nurses at her side, I pushed out my Little Star. She slid from my body with a bellow that matched my own. For that matter, that matched her grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s, too. They victory screeched like a team of conquering Valkyries when the next generation made her way into the world. They celebrated her arrival. They celebrated my bravery and the bravery of all people who share the ordeal of giving birth.

  This was the Larssens at their best. Not the arguments or the ridiculous jokes or the shoe flinging or anything else. This.

  Dr. Cardiff was stalwart through it all. She was the one to catch Cassiopeia, whooping aloud at a fine, healthy, robust seven-and-a-half-pound, hairy-as-heck infant. My kid was fuzzy all over. A Hispanic yeti kid, just like her Hispanic yeti mommy. We could Nair it up together in the weirdest bonding experience ever.

  I’d teach her how to bleach her mustache when she was older if she wanted. It’d be grand.

  Cassiopeia was slimy and red and fierce when she met the world. She was placed on my belly immediately upon vacating my body, to keep her body temperature up. They cleaned her up right there on top of me, placing a cap on her head and a heated blanket over her chubby body as they fussed over her and me—yes, her blanket was pink, it had finally caught up with me, and I didn’t care one bit. They clamped her cord in two places and cut b
etween it, taking a sample of blood to test her blood type. O negative, like mine, which was a weird bit of pride but I wasn’t exactly operating at full potential. They suctioned her tiny nose free of goop. I stared down into her murky eyes and started sobbing my brains out that she was real. That I’d made the journey and it was officially the next phase of my life. Mom joined me in the weepies. Devi, too. Only my grandmother remained stoic, but when they helped me move the baby into position so I could breastfeed her for the first time, I swear I saw her eyes get glassy.

  “Her head’s all pointy,” I said, watching the little mouth working on my nipple. She’d latched immediately, which was good. I’d read about other moms having a hard time with it but that wasn’t one of my trials. “Not that I’m complaining. Just more making an observation.”

  To be perfectly honest, that kid could have had face tentacles and a spiked tail and I’d have deemed her the most precious thing who’d ever precioused. She was mine, I’d grown her and everyone who didn’t like her weirdly shaped head or excessive monkey fur could bite me. She was perfect. I would fight them.

  ...when I could feel my legs again.

  “That happens,” Dr. Cardiff said, ridding herself of her fluid-stained coverings with the help of my delivery nurses. “Your birth canal squishes her head. It’ll even out over the first few weeks. The body hair will fall out, too. That grows inside the womb.”

  “Weird. Womb fur,” Mom said.

  “...thanks, Mom.”

  “You’re welcome. She’s gorgeous, kiddo. Absolutely gorgeous.”

  “She has her father’s nose,” Mormor said. “But the rest of her is all Larssen.”

  “Does she?” I peered down at the tiny little face—at the angry tiny face, because apparently Cass had opinions about the indignities of moving out of my womb. There was a heart-shaped face with a pointy chin and big eyes under dark arches of eyebrows. There was a tiny bump at the end of her nose that wasn’t mine, but definitely Jack’s, though his was at an angle thanks to being broken.

  If Nimrod Father wanted to insist on the DNA test, I’d do it, but he’d have to be pretty ignorant not to recognize his son’s schnoz.

  Dr. Cardiff congratulated us again and made a swift, albeit warm, exit. She looked tired, but to her credit, she’d been there for a long, long time and deserved sleep. I was wheeled out of the delivery room and into a regular recovery room. The nurses continued to fuss awhile, checking vitals on me and on the baby, and eventually taking an ink footprint of the baby. They kept one for the hospital, but the other one could go home with me.

  Baby’s first refrigerator art.

  Cass finished nursing on what little milk I had to offer. One of the nurses, a nice woman named Vikki, assured me my milk would be far more plentiful over the next few days, but that the baby didn’t need so much at first because her stomach was so tiny. That was reassuring, and I stroked my hand over Cass’s back, marveling in the softness of her skin.

  “You did great,” Devi said with a soft, tired sigh. Somehow, despite hanging out with me all night and most of the day, the witch still looked gorgeous. It wasn’t fair. “I’m gonna go get Jack, if that’s cool? And I’ll call Leaf to let him know. And my parents. They’re gonna want to come get me soon. Mom’s freaking out that I haven’t slept in thirty hours.”

  “Thanks. Thank you,” I said. “You were the best coach. I love you so much.”

  Devi leaned down to press a kiss to my head. “And I love you! I wonder if Lamaze coach is an excused absence for the day?”

  “Probably not, but maybe your dad can call in another favor.”

  “Truth.” She waggled her fingers at me. She kissed Cass’s forehead, and hugged my mom and Mormor, and then she ducked out of the room. I smiled and held my kid close. When Vikki the nurse picked up Cass to put some antibacterial ointment in her tiny eyes, I flinched. The baby cried, and I had to suppress a completely irrational desire to rend flesh from Vikki’s bones for upsetting my child.

  ...it was cool.

  Everything was cool.

  Because after Vikki put a bracelet on the baby, then one on me, she returned Cass back to me. Any longer and she might not have had a face. I was feeling protective.

  My mother asked to hold her, and I was considerably less homicidal about my family members touching my kid than I was strangers, even nice strangers like Vikki. Mormor took her turn afterward, singing quietly in Swedish to her. I was enjoying the comradery of the whole thing, the feeling that the Larssen women could conquer the world, when there was a soft tap on the door. I looked up. There stood Jack, his mother right behind him, her hands clasped on his shoulders.

  “Hey. Hi,” he said, swallowing hard. He looked from me to the baby and his fingers twitched. “Oh, wow. Wow.”

  I appreciated that Jack had never asked or demanded to come into the delivery room with me. He kept in touch with Devi after she texted him, and she advised that my room was full capacity at three people with my mom and grandmother and her. He’d been cool about it and asked her to message him when we were closer to the birth. An hour before Cass made her for-real entrance, Devi had texted him to come to the hospital, that it’d be done soon. I was fully dilated and ready to rock and roll.

  He’d been patiently waiting in the hospital waiting room for news ever since.

  With his mother and father.

  Devi advised not coming in with his father right away so as not to upset me. I appreciated her concern, but I was less worried about me and more worried about Mormor whipping more shoes at him and getting kicked out. Nimrod Father could wait awhile, maybe after Mormor had gone home to get some sleep herself.

  “Come see her,” Mormor said to Jack, perhaps a little sharper than she should have. To soften it, she smiled at him and walked his way, the baby cradled against her chest. She instructed him to sit in the chair next to my bed, where Devi had been a little while ago, and then, with the utmost care, she showed him exactly how he had to hold our daughter. He supported her little neck, he notched her into the crook of his arm. He stared at her face and he looked...amazed.

  “She’s beautiful,” he said, almost reverently.

  “Yeah she is. And hairy,” I said. “But don’t worry, that’ll fall out.”

  Caroline moved in beside her son and crouched, her head hovering over the baby’s. “Oh, Jack. Sara. She’s lovely. So lovely,” she said.

  ...yeah.

  Yeah, she really was.

  My kid was amazeballs.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  There’s a movie my mom likes called Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It’s pretty much a white-boy wank-fest, but there’s a quote in it I like. Ferris, white-boy wanker primero uno, breaks the fourth wall to tell you to stop and look around at life, it’s moving pretty fast.

  It’s a surprising piece of wisdom from a dude whose greatest life achievement is bucking his high school’s attendance policy. I like it, though. It’s a good message, and one that seemed relevant to my situation.

  Things had to change with a kid in the picture. I wasn’t in school during the day because I was at home discovering that infants dislike sleep but are very pro-food, and my boobs were the food of choice. It was bizarre to have a tiny adorable parasite to take care of, but I got used to it quicker than I expected I would. Mom took the first two weeks off to give me a hand, but after she went back to work, Mormor was there for me.

  For better or worse.

  “You’re messy.” Mormor paused her stirring of brownie batter to motion at me with a chocolate-smeared spoon. “You’ll want to do the thing.”

  “What?”

  I had Cass set up in her bassinet beside the kitchen table, which had wheels on the bottom so I could move it between the kitchen and living room with relative ease. I devoured an omelet and bacon because, post-pregnancy, eggs were back on the table again, much to my delight.<
br />
  “You need to use the milking machine your mother bought you. You are leaking.”

  “I’m not a cow, Mormor. God.”

  She sighed, exasperated. “What do you call it then? The breast pump. There, are you happy? You will want to use it. Your tuttar are doing the thing.”

  I glanced down. Two perfect circles stained my gray T-shirt on either side of my chest.

  Oh, yes, my tuttar were most certainly doing “the thing.” They did “the thing” more often than not.

  Those were typical occurrences in my day-to-day life. So, too, were my friends stopping by after school. I couldn’t take Cass out yet for fear of exposing her to unnecessary germs her little body couldn’t fight off, nor could I bring myself to leave her for any extended amount of time, so they came to me on a rotation. Mondays, Erin and Morgan hung out, Erin always producing the coolest onesies for my kid. The most recent one was a cartoon Frankenstein with Mommy’s Little Monster screen-printed underneath. It was so cute, I wanted to die. Morgan also brought gifts—usually books from library sales that I could read to my little monster when she was old enough to appreciate story time.

  Goodnight Moon and Where The Wild Things Are were joined by other classics such as Everyone Poops and Horton Hears a Who!

  “Dr. Seuss was kind of a racist but he sorta turned it around on Horton,” she said. “I figured it was a safe call.”

  Noted on the Dr. Seuss thing.

  Apparently, all our faves are problematic.

  Tuesdays were Aunt Devi days. Devi was always so careful, insisting I take a nap while she watched the kid and entertained Mormor. She was all about making sure I got a break, too, even if that break was just an hour of shut-eye in my room followed by a long uninterrupted shower. I got to rest with her around, which made Tuesdays one of my favorite days for reasons that went beyond having my best friend nearby.