Belly Up Page 4

  It was a whirlwind—often a lonely whirlwind—but the busyness helped with that. Aaron kept right on Aaroning at me, sending me check-in texts and Snaps that probably would have made his girlfriend’s hair fall out, but I never responded.

  “Block his nuuuuumber,” Devi said to me on FaceTime. “Bloooock. Hiiiiim.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  But I never did. It was unhealthy, but those messages were a weird form of validation. He’d broken my heart. Knowing he struggled with it made my own suffering a little more palatable.

  Bitchy, yes.

  Regrets, no.

  My world was sorting, boxes and trash bags. A third to keep, a third for the dumpster, a third for charity donations. With so much going on, I never really caught on that I’d come down with not an STD, but a fetus. I was more tired than usual, sure, but my days were long. My stomach was off. Not horribly so, but I chalked it up to the stress of the move. My boobs hurt, my nips aching so much sometimes I’d scream angrily at my bra and T-shirts for daring to graze them, but I’d gotten breast sensitivity with PMS before, so it didn’t occur to me to worry about it. And the killer? I still got periods. Light ones, but periods all the same, which is why I didn’t figure out something was really “wrong” until I was almost three months pregnant.

  Eggs finally did me in.

  I loved eggs, ate them all the time. It was a breakfast ritual between Mom and I where she’d get up in the morning, scramble up some eggs, I’d make toast and butter it, and we’d eat together. It continued into the summer, as I took point on packing duty with Mom working all the time. She’d wake me up and we’d chow down as per usual before we went in opposite directions to carry out our days.

  Wednesday morning, early. I was tired. So was Mom. Neither one of us were talking as we sipped our coffees, doing how we normally did on a weekday. Mom broke out the eggs, dropped them into the pan and BOOM. The smell hit me. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you pregnant women get extra senses because of Preggo Magic, but they do react to stimuli differently, and in that moment, the smell of eggs became something horrific. It was farts and sadness. It was old garbage and sweaty armpits and every other atrocious stench all rolled into one. I fled the kitchen to toss my cookies into the toilet in the bathroom, wishing to God that all eggs, everywhere, ceased to exist.

  Mom followed me, rubbed my back, asked if I was okay.

  “No eggs,” I warbled. Which, again, was weird because I’d eaten eggs fine up to that point, but that’s something people should know about pregnancy—your tastes can and do change often and rapidly for no rhyme or reason beyond “hormones.”

  “What did you eat?”

  I did a mental tally of all the stuff I’d crammed into my maw the night before. Half a tube of Pringles while I was talking to Devi. A bowl of ice cream. Enough Diet Coke to float the Titanic. While it wasn’t the healthiest fare in the world, it wasn’t any different than anything I’d devour any other day of the week.

  “Nothing special,” I said, fighting off the gags.

  “Do you want some toast?”

  “No. I just—gonna go back to sleep, I think.”

  Mom was there with me, following, helping me into bed and tucking me in. She tutted and fussed over me, her hand on my forehead. She produced a thermometer. I had what she thought was a low-grade fever. She offered to stay home and nurse me but I told her I’d be fine, and I was fine a few hours later, if not slightly queasy. We both dismissed it as a bout of the flu. It wasn’t until three days later when she hauled my sorry, pukey self to the doctor for said flu that The Question was asked.

  “Could you be pregnant?” the nurse asked.

  She seemed nice—Deb, her name tag said. She wore scrubs with cartoon kitties. A stethoscope looped around her neck. Her hair was salt-and-pepper gray and tied back in a ponytail. Her eyeliner was on point—perfect cat wings that could have cut a man who got too close.

  “What?”

  Mom was in the waiting room. I was sitting on the examination table with its crinkly paper cover, my feet dangling off the side and not touching the floor.

  “Could you be pregnant?”

  “No,” I immediately said, because again, I hadn’t missed a period at that point and I had no idea you could bleed and be pregnant. Deb nodded, jotted down some notes, took my temperature and blood pressure, and ducked out of the room. It wasn’t until the door slammed behind her that I started freaking out about the Jack thing all over again. I never had managed to track him down. Calls to friends and having those friends call their friends yielded nothing—he was the amazing disappearing penis. I was disappointed, honestly, and it’d taken me a few weeks to overcome the self-doubt, confusion and paranoia about his potentially toxic pants parts, but eventually I’d accepted it as a thing that’d happened, live and learn. There were other Jacks in the sea.

  It was, as Devi not-so-poetically put it, my sticky send-off to an old life in an old town.

  But there I was, months later, sweating it again, literally days before I moved to Stonington.

  Maybe Jack’s back. Like a bad penny, Mormor would say.

  I was chewing my fingernails down to stubs when Deb reappeared with the plastic sample cup and wipes. She motioned at the closed door of the doctor’s office bathroom behind her. “Just leave that in the slot in the wall when you’re done,” she said. “Dr. Bhatia will be in shortly.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Thanks—for the pee cup,” I followed up with, because I’m a nervous talker and that’s not at all awkward.

  Deb eyed me like she might track a rabid lab animal. “You’re welcome.”

  I decided, as I dragged my sorry, tired, pukey self across the clinic office hallway, that I’d tell the doctor about my hookup just in case it’d given me the dreaded fungawookie. I’d had a pelvic exam once before. I’d hated that someone was all up in my guts and poking around with metal equipment cold enough to frost my ovaries, but if there was something wrong with me, I couldn’t get better without honestly communicating what might have led to my being sick in the first place.

  That doctor’s office pee saw me wrestling the deepest thoughts I’d ever had in my seventeen years of life. And it all revolved around vaginal swabs and made-up names for STDs.

  I washed my hands and headed back to the exam room, still feeling nauseated, more so when I got a waft of a cleaning chemical someone was using in the room next door to mine. I closed the door, breathing in and out through my mouth so I wouldn’t paint the walls with the single piece of toast I’d managed to keep down. About ten minutes later, there was a soft rap on the door and a short heavyset woman with brown skin came in, her silky black hair tied back in a bun. White coat, blue-and-white-polka-dotted dress, sensible pumps. Dr. Bhatia smiled at me, her hand with pretty gold rings clasping onto a clipboard.

  “Serendipity? What a pretty name.”

  “Sara,” I said. “And thanks.”

  She nodded and put her clipboard aside, pulling a wheely stool out from under the counter. She folded her hands in her lap and adopted what was probably supposed to be a comforting smile, but the faint lines around her eyes made me think something was up. “Sara, before we start talking, you should know about some confidentiality clauses regarding your healthcare privacy as a minor. I am required, by law, to report any medical findings to your parent or guardian that I deem a threat to you or your personal safety. That said, my personal philosophy is to have a dialogue, to see what you think, and to make a plan with you that will ensure you are safe and as healthy as can be. We’ll bring parents in only after we make that plan. You’re seventeen, yes?”

  “What? Yeah. Yes,” I said, my stomach sinking to my knees. Why was she talking about threats to my safety? Had the pee test proven I had radioactive vag? Were my guts going to fall out?

  “Okay, well, you’re a young woman and I’m sure we can make
a plan that’ll work for you. Do you feel safe at home? With your mother?” The doctor reached for her clipboard, lifting it up so it hid the bottom half of her face. I concentrated on the dark vee of her manicured brows.

  “I... Yeah. Home’s fine. I get along great with my mom. Is something wrong with me? Like, am I dying? It was only the once. Well, three times in the truck, but—”

  “We’ll take some blood to rule out any complications after we talk. Sara, you’re pregnant.”

  When this moment happens in movies, there’s usually some dramatic reaction to it, like a scream or a whoop or something to indicate that the gravity of the situation—that you, a human, have another human parasiting it up in your midsection—is understood and-slash-or appreciated. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t make a sound. I just stared at her. It was the total reboot, the blue screen of death that lets you know the computer’s operating system has shut down and needs a few minutes to hopefully patch itself back together again before it can function.

  Preg. Nant.

  Pregnant.

  Baby.

  Baby in me.

  Jack’s baby.

  “Are you alright, Sara? Did you want your mother?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Dr. Bhatia wheeled her stool in close so she was right beside me. She didn’t touch me, which I appreciated—I’d have probably jumped out of my skin, but she was close and she was a presence and there was comfort in that. Being alone moments after finding out you are toting around an unplanned and not super welcome kid? Not a pleasant notion.

  We sat like that for a few minutes, her waiting patiently for me to react. She expected me to cry; I know that because she brought over the box of tissues and put it against my leg on the exam table. I dropped my gaze to it, reading the word Kleenex on the side over and over again. I wasn’t really thinking, more existing, but what was strange was that the existence itself was changed. There were other days I’d sat looking blankly at walls or ceilings, my mind on autopilot, drifting, but never before had I done that floating, thoughtless existing with the back-of-my-mind knowledge that I would be a mother.

  It was different. I can’t articulate how it was different, but it was. I was Sara. I was in the doctor’s office. I’d just found out I was pregnant.

  These were my truths.

  Chapter Seven

  “Okay. Okay, sure.” Mom leaned against the clinic countertop, blinking fast, her hands curled over the lip of the Formica. She looked stunned, possibly as stunned as I’d looked a few minutes ago when I’d been told. A sheaf of blond hair had slumped down over her right eye, but she wasn’t brushing it away. She was too busy staring at me like I’d spawned an extra head. “So we have some options. I... Wow. Okay.”

  Dr. Bhatia had offered to mediate our talk. I’d declined, and she assured me she’d be back after we had our family discussion—to just open the door and she’d know to come back. I needed blood work still, she reminded me, for reasons that included ruling out STDs that could potentially harm me and the baby, and they’d want to run some other screenings now knowing I was a walking, talking incubator but, Don’t worry about that right now.

  I could worry about that after I dropped the anvil on my mother’s head.

  She looked pretty good for having taken an anvil.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, looking down. “It was one night. Aaron was there, I was upset—”

  “It’s... Christ. I’m not going to tell you it’s okay. This is life-changing stuff, Sara, but I will tell you we’ll get through it. Your grandmother is going to be such an asshole about this.”

  What Mom wasn’t saying was that she herself was only thirty-four. Mom had come home two weeks after high school graduation to tell Mormor she was pregnant with me. Mormor wasn’t the type to pull punches; she’d see the parallel, like mother like daughter, and probably tell my mother it was her fault I’d done a boneheaded thing in an F-150 after a bottle of incredibly crappy wine.

  ...which I couldn’t let happen. My mom had given me all the talks. I’d just been reckless, played sperm roulette and lost.

  “I’ll talk to her,” I said. “Tell her it was my fault.”

  “It won’t matter, but that’s not... I mean, it’s important, but it’s not what’s really important. What’s important is what you want to do about it. You’re seventeen, a great student. Is it Aaron’s?”

  “No!” I shouted, and she flinched like I’d whacked her. I immediately felt bad. “Sorry. God, no. It’s Jack’s—the guy.”

  I’d told her about “the guy.” She’d listened to me bemoan the loss of “the guy” a few too many times over the last few months, so she knew exactly who I meant and why it was complicated. Jack was the phantom of my vagina. It was like The Phantom of the Opera only with less kidnapping.

  “Aww, crapsicles.” Mom finally brushed the hair out of her face and came to stand by my side. Her arm slid over my shoulders. “I could kill you, you know.” But her words were softened by the soft kiss she pressed to my temple. She loved me, even if I was a colossal screwup.

  I guess it helped that I was her colossal screwup.

  “I don’t know what I want to do,” I said to her. I’d just digested the reality of the kid growing inside of me. My brain hadn’t yet moved on to the next step, which was keeping it, abortion, adoption. My life was forever changed, yes, but I wasn’t yet ready for the choose-your-own-adventure portion of post-conception reality.

  “We don’t need a decision right now, but we’ll need one soonish, and honestly, I think we should talk this over with Mormor, too. We’re moving into her house, she loves you, it’s not like she hasn’t walked this walk with yours truly before.”

  “Yeah, of course. Yeah. She’s going to be a jerk about it, though.”

  “Well, of course she is, but she wouldn’t be Mormor if she wasn’t a jerk.”

  Mom gave me a pained, tight smile, the kind that suggested she had gas pains, and stepped away from my side. “We ready for the doctor?” she asked, her hand already extending for the metal door handle.

  No.

  “Sure,” I said, feeling like I was going to be sick, and it had nothing to do with eggs, or the smell of cleaning chemicals, and everything to do with what I’d just learned and its myriad complications.

  * * *

  Mormor’s house was one of those big New England farmhouses: two stories, gray with white shutters, a wraparound porch she’d decorated with flourishing window boxes, hanging plants spaced out between the second story supports, and too much wicker furniture. Mormor loved wicker. It was an essential part of her aesthetic.

  Mom didn’t call to announce us, because if she had, Mormor would have insisted Mom tell her why we were showing up on a Thursday when Mom should have been at work. She’d have been relentless, asked a thousand questions Mom would have had to sidestep or ignore, and then there would have been yelling. Mormor, as previously stated, was not a subtle creature, and when she latched on to something, she was about as delicate as a rabid wolverine.

  So we decided to spring it on her.

  We parked Mom’s ancient black Jeep in the driveway, my finger toying with the edges of the Band-Aid from my blood draw. I don’t know why the nurse chose a Toy Story bandage for a teenager, but it was at odds with the thoughts swirling about in my head, which were, essentially, that you really weren’t a kid anymore when you got pregnant. You were an adult, or at least an adult in comparison to the little person you were supposed to spew into the world nine months later.

  And what kind of an adult wore a Toy Story Band-Aid?

  This one. Me.

  My kid is screwed.

  Mormor was in the garden. This wasn’t surprising; the woman liked vegetables a whole lot more than she liked most people, and she spent any and all sunny days out digging in dirt. She wore a short-sleeved button-down shirt with loud orange f
lowers on it and a pair of khaki shorts. Her steel gray hair was tucked up under a wide-brimmed bonnet-type hat. Green gloves protected her hands from whatever noxious concoction she was slopping on her plants. I had my guesses, none of them were pleasant, but there she was, reaching into a bucket, producing a brown gritty mess and tucking it onto the roots of her vegetables.

  She never lifted her head when we approached.

  “Hi, Ma.” Mom stepped up to the edge of a row of squash, her arms across her chest, sunglasses perched on the end of her nose. Her spine was so straight it could have been made of metal.

  “There’s a basket by the hose,” Mormor said in greeting, her English laced with a hint of Swedish accent.

  “I see it.”

  “Good. Pick the zucchini. Most people call before they show up, Astrid.” Mormor lifted her face. She and Mom looked a whole lot alike with their pale eyes and pale hair and long noses. They also had the same this-is-a-load-of-crap face, which they were both wearing, with the curled lip and the crinkles in the nose. Mom broke first, though, because she always did, muttering under her breath as she grabbed the basket and stooped to snap zucchinis off the vine.

  “It was important enough to just come over, Ma,” my mom said, crouching down and reaching in beneath all the verdant green. She snarled as one of the leaves whacked her in the face. Mormor snorted and turned her laser-beam stare my way.

  “What’s wrong? Did someone die? Come here, let me look at you.” Mormor stood up, brushing her knees free of garden dirt as she walked my way. She pulled off her rubber gloves and reached for my face, cupping my chin and turning it left and right, like she was examining a horse.