Belly Up Read online

  And, if not answers, an aneurysm.

  Because Mormor.

  “It’s simple. I’ll adopt it,” Mormor said ten minutes later, after I’d presented my thoughts on abortion versus adoption versus ultimately keeping the baby. Both she and Mom were very good through the listening, nodding and asking gentle questions to flesh out my thoughts on the matter. Mom kept rubbing her temple, and I was pretty sure I caught a waft of smoke in her hair, which meant she’d snuck off for a stress cigarette, but she was nice to me despite her strains. Mormor was direct and blunt and eminently Mormor-like.

  “What? Ma, no.” My mother’s face contracted, her expression suggesting she’d like to put my grandmother’s head in the garbage disposal. “That’s not—”

  “If she’s worried about bringing it up, I’ll bring it up. I have the time. You turned out fine,” Mormor said. “Unless you think I was a bad mother.”

  “Ma,” my mother groaned. “Don’t. This isn’t about you. If Sara wants to give her baby to a family, that’s her right.”

  “But it’s a Larssen baby,” Mormor insisted. “I’d bring it up. If she’s going to give it to a family, her own is just fine unless you know something I don’t know about my parenting. So it’s as much about me as it is about this baby. I’ll raise it.”

  Devi looked at me across the table. She had that deer-in-headlights expression that suggested she had no idea what to do in the face of multiple generations of me arguing among themselves. I shrugged because I didn’t know what to do, either. Arguing with Mormor was like wrestling a wolverine. I wasn’t willing to go there, but I didn’t have to, either, because my mom had my back.

  “Sorry about this,” I whispered to Devi.

  Devi bit into her standard-issue tomato slice drizzled in balsamic. “It’s fine. I just—”

  “What do you want to do, Sara?” my grandmother interrupted. “Are you alright with the idea of me bringing it up if you don’t want to?”

  It. My kid is an it. I’ve been saying “it,” too. Was that wrong?

  Weird.

  Weirder: “my kid.”

  “You don’t have to answer that,” my mother shot back. “You’re not required to make any decisions yet, Sara.”

  “Okay, cool. Yeah. I’d like to think about it more, I think.” Mormor cast me a look like I’d betrayed her, so I immediately followed up with, “You’re awesome, Mormor. If I decide to go adoption, I’d definitely consider it? I...mmm. I don’t know. I don’t want some weird V.C. Andrews situation is all.”

  “Isn’t that the one about the kids locked in the attic and the crazy poisoner mom?” Devi helpfully chimed in.

  “I’m not locking my kid in the attic, Devi. Or poisoning them.” I frowned at her. She winked at me. How could you stay upset in the face of that? Devi was the best. I was in love with her a little then, and probably still am, which she knew but was kind enough not to make weird.

  “The point is—I had a point before the poisoning—oh.” I paused. “It’s... I don’t know that I’d want to lie to the kid and tell them that my grandmother is their mother or whatever. If we keep the baby, I want the baby to know they’re mine. So we’d have to work something out if that’s the way we go. Which I’m not sure of yet? But I’ll think about it.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Mormor insisted. “If you want to keep the baby, I say keep the baby. We’ll keep the baby.”

  “That’s Sara’s decision, Ma, and you need to back off.” It was weird to hear my mom use Mormor’s own tones against her, yet that’s exactly what was playing out in Mormor’s kitchen. Ice queen was being challenged by mini ice queen, woe be to those closest who would suffer their frozen wrath.

  Which were me and Devi. We both wanted to hide.

  Surprisingly, Mormor didn’t retort. Instead, she startled when the toaster popped up two pieces of white bread, snagging them and smearing them with butter. The kettle whistled beside her and she efficiently whisked it away to pour a cup of tea. Both toast and tea were presented to me, the sugar bowl nudged over so I could “pollute perfectly good tea.”

  Mormor liked her tea with honey and only honey and anything else was inferior and wrong.

  “You need to eat,” she said matter-of-factly. “For you and the baby.”

  I frowned down at the buttered toast and tea.

  “I might puke.” I reached for the toast and nibbled on the crust despite the unpleasant gurgling in my belly.

  Mormor stepped into the pantry to rummage around. She reappeared a minute later with a red pail that she slid next to me on the table.

  “And this is why God invented buckets.”

  Chapter Ten

  Two days later, I was at the OB/GYN, awaiting the arrival of a woman named Dr. Cardiff who was supposed to give me my first prenatal exam. I perched on the exam table, no pants, no panties, with a paper blanket over my lap. I eyeballed the counter, hardcore frowning at the implements of doom laid out beside the sink on a big blue pad. I could appreciate why the doctor’s office did it; it saved time when it came to the actual exam, not having to run around and get all your supplies together, but seeing that shiny silver speculum next to a bunch of other doodads I couldn’t name but that’d probably soon be inside of me? Not fun.

  I hated the speculum. I hated it with the fury of a thousand starving raccoons.

  Pelvic exams really weren’t the worst thing ever, but the first time was traumatizing in that I-don’t-know-what-to-expect way. After Mom figured out that Aaron and I were serious enough to bang, she took me to the doctor’s to get me on the pill. That’s when the “oops, sorries” and polite apologies happened as my doctor had nestled a speculum up into me so she could make sure my plumbing was fully operational.

  It hadn’t hurt, but it was uncomfortable in a foreign-pressure sort of way. I recognized after the fact, when Mom got me an apology sorry-for-the-cooch-check-up ice cream, I’d built the whole ordeal up in my head to be a lot worse than it actually was. At least my gynecological trials had yielded a prescription for birth control and a clean bill of health.

  As evidenced by the new bean-sized parasite hanging out in my lower quarters, I had remained extra healthy.

  Fertile Myrtle, that’s me.

  Now, you might be asking, “If you were on the pill with Aaron, why weren’t you on the pill with Jack?” And the answer is side effects. Birth control pills came saddled with baggage, and my baggage was worse than most. My cramps were far worse on the pill than off. My mood swings were twice as bad while medicated, plus I was tired all the time. I tried three different pills over the two years I was on birth control to try to find one that wouldn’t make me a mopey rage machine, but it happened with all of them to some extent. I suffered through it in the name of young love.

  Screw you, Aaron. I want those years back without cramps, thanks.

  When we broke up, I asked Mom if I could go off of it, assuring her I had no intention of riding the boyfriend carousel again because men were vile and ought to be launched out of cannons. She reluctantly agreed, knowing what the pill did to me. She was undoubtedly kicking herself for that decision these months down the line, but...well. It wasn’t her fault. It was mine, as I assured her at least a dozen times the first day after my diagnosis of fetus.

  She said she knew that, but I wasn’t sure she believed it. The stress cigarettes told another story.

  I could smell them on her, the smoke clinging to her hair, and I glared at her as she sat in the side chair in the office, rooting through her purse for bubblegum.

  “You’re smoking again.”

  “Not often,” she said, frowning. She peered up at me. Her eyes were red at the edges, which meant she hadn’t slept well, and that was probably my fault, too.

  “If I have this kid and you get lung cancer, you’ll feel bad,” I said.

  “I’ll feel bad if I get lun
g cancer, anyway. It’s cancer. Cancer sucks,” she replied.

  She had me there. She pulled out some peppermint gum, offering me a stick. Oddly, I was okay with that particular smell, and I’d been avoiding strong smells for a few days on account of the hormonal flux. I popped it into my mouth, trying hard not to think about the impending appointment. It was less the exam itself that bugged me, but more the embarrassment of having my innermost secret parts on display for a stranger.

  When I voiced that to Mormor at brunch that morning, she’d scoffed at me over her bread topped with liver pâté.

  “Do you know how many snipporna they look at in a day?” she’d demanded.

  “...snipporna?”

  “Yes. Vagoos. Vaginas. That doctor’s life is looking at one snippa after another. Do you have teeth down there?”

  “...Mormor.”

  “Well, do you? Teeth? Fire? Do you shoot fire from your vagina?”

  “No! It’s just—”

  “It is no big deal to your doctor. It is only a big deal to you because you are young and stupid.”

  My mother took exception to my grandmother calling me stupid and the fight was on. I just sat there eating my toast while they fought, trying hard not to shudder because Mormor’s liver pâté looked and smelled like cat food.

  Which was how and why I was thinking about bubblegum, cat food and the Swedish word for vagina when my doctor entered the room.

  Dr. Cardiff was tall and broad through the shoulders. She was probably in her thirties, with short-cut light brown hair, wire-rimmed glasses and a wide smile with lots and lots of white teeth. When she extended her hand to me, her doctor’s coat rose up mid-forearm and I could see a sleeve of tattoos, the bottommost one a unicorn with a rainbow mane.

  Okay, so, my OB/GYN is badass.

  Cool.

  “Hey there, Serendipity. Love the name,” she said in greeting.

  “Sara,” I said. “But thanks. Gotta give my mom credit for that one.”

  “Good job, Mom. Dr. Cardiff, nice to meet you,” my doctor said, extending that same hand for a shake to my mother.

  “Astrid,” Mom said. “Nice to meet you.”

  Dr. Cardiff sat down at the computer to my left and eyeballed my vitals. The nurse had taken them and, outside of a little high blood pressure because I had white coat syndrome, everything had looked good. The doctor perused a couple of screens, nodded and smiled. “Okay, so we’re going to get some personal info out of the way before we jump into the pelvic. Can you state your birthday for me?”

  From there, it was a series of questions about my period, my general health, family history that Mom had to help with and my personal life, which Dr. Cardiff explained as her ensuring I was safe and would be safe for the duration of my pregnancy. I had to admit to her, I had zero information on the baby daddy, which she gave me no crap for, but due to those gaps in knowledge, she did recommend the extended genetic-testing options so we knew exactly what we were dealing with. It was a blood test, she said, which she needed anyway for other tests, and what was a few extra vials?

  The conversation wasn’t too bad, taking about ten minutes total, and yielded an approximate due date on when the baby would exit my spew parts to join the world.

  “Since you know the exact date of conception, we can comfortably say around February sixteenth of next year,” she said. “You’re eleven weeks along.”

  “Aquarius. I like Aquariuses. Smart and logical,” my mom said, because she was totally into zodiac stuff and read her horoscope daily. This probably isn’t so surprising, considering she was the woman who saddled me with the big-ass hippie name.

  Dr. Cardiff smiled. “But with a hint of Pisces. They’ll be creative.”

  That surprised me almost as much as her rainbow unicorn tattoo, but it also made me more comfortable with her, in general. She reminded me of my mom, only more butch and a little more badass because of the tattoos. When she asked me to scoot to the bottom of the table and drop my heels into the footy stirrup things, I complied, albeit awkwardly, and waited for the delicate pawing and coldness that had happened the first time I’d found myself in that position.

  Mom reached for my hand and I gave it over. There was the squirt of lube as the doctor got ready to prod my no-no parts for the first of what would probably be many prenatal crotch delves.

  Weirdly, the speculum was warm this time, and I looked at the ceiling with wonder that I didn’t feel like she’d violated me with a Popsicle. That’d been my one takeaway from my last go-round with a gynecologist—that all medical implements were stored in freezers to make you as antsy as possible during your most vulnerable moments.

  “It’s not cold,” I said, awe in my voice.

  “That blue thing on the counter is a heating pad. You get a cold speculum up your wazoo once, you never forget it, or at least I don’t, so I try not to use them,” Dr. Cardiff responded.

  I actually giggled at that, despite the little clicks of the speculum as she opened me up and swabbed me out. Again, it wasn’t awful, just some pressure, an unfortunate draft where drafts ought not to be. She brought a bendy lamp in close so she could peer inside to make sure I wasn’t harboring a cave troll down there and, deeming me “pink and perfect,” pulled the speculum out. She adjusted the paper sheet for modesty and told me I could sit up.

  “So I’m thinking we’ll get an ultrasound ASAP. The bleeding the first few months warrants a check, and you’re so close to twelve weeks, it’s okay to peek.”

  I sat up on the table, glancing from the doctor over to my mother and back again. “Will we be figuring out if it’s a boy or a girl or—”

  “Not yet. That’s usually closer to sixteen weeks, but I want to make sure there’s a heartbeat and check our development.”

  The doctor washed her hands and moved over to the sink. I stared at her back, horrified at the idea of my kid not having a heartbeat. “So if it doesn’t...”

  “We’ll worry about that if and when we get there,” Mom said. “Don’t borrow problems.”

  That was a Mormor-ism if I’d ever heard one. It was also useless. I was already worrying, but saying so did nothing. Instead, I watched Dr. Cardiff sit back down at her computer. She glanced my way, offering me a bright smile.

  “She’s right. There’s no reason to believe anything is wrong. Some women do bleed during part or all of their pregnancy. It’s not super common, but no reason to panic. I’m more interested in other aspects of development, plus I want to be sure there’s only one baby in there.”

  Only one baby.

  Oh, God. Multiple womb goblins! I hadn’t even thought of that.

  I must have looked green, because Mom got up from the chair in the corner to come stand beside me. She leaned down to kiss my cheek, her smoke-stinky hair far too close to my nose to not make my stomach churn.

  “We got this, kiddo. I promise. It’ll be okay. Don’t worry till it’s time to worry, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I said, collapsing back onto the exam table like I was boneless. I stared at the perfectly square ceiling tiles with their potted lights, blinking fast so I didn’t cry.

  Not worrying until it’s time to worry.

  Not worrying until it’s time to worry.

  Not worrying...

  What a load of bullsh...crap.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was quiet post–doctor’s appointment, so Mom did what lots of moms do and bought my happiness with McDonald’s. It wasn’t good for me—I was pretty sure I was eating actual plastic, like that fake Fisher-Price food kids play with—but it tasted good and was salty. Also, it was one food that hadn’t become a toxic barf factory for me post-fetus, and for that I was grateful.

  Grateful and gnawing on my second cheeseburger.

  “Gotta pack up the rest of the kitchen,” she said as we pulled onto the main route that’d ge
t us home. I nodded and crammed about sixty billion french fries into my mouth because I wasn’t proud. “I can’t believe we’re moving tomorrow. Are you ready for this?”

  After Mormor’s snippa lesson at brunch, the visit with the doctor and the unpleasant news that I had to visit my new school next week to do both course selection and talk to a guidance counselor because I was pregnant? No, I wasn’t ready. Not for any of it.

  But, of course, I was far too lazy to articulate that so I shrugged and ate more fries.

  We got home. We packed. Most of the apartment was ready to go. Mom started carrying things down to the car, and when I bent to follow her and help, she tsked and swatted me away.

  “Nope. No preggers carrying boxes. I love you, kid, but you’re as useless as tits on a bull right now.”

  “I... Wait. What?”

  “No heavy lifting. It’s in the preggo contract.”

  “Oh.” And so I had the unpleasant reality of watching my mother loading boxes into the car with no one to help her. It didn’t seem fair, particularly with the amount of boxes we had to pack, her diminutive stature and the fact that my poor life choice had put us in the situation, so I did the only thing I could think to do in a dire situation.

  Emotionally manipulate my best friend.

  Wifey, I texted, my fingers gliding over the phone and smearing it with McDonald’s grease. I dashed at it with a napkin but that only served to make bigger smears that’d require Windex or maybe a flamethrower.

  Wut up.

  Can you help my mom pack boxes into the car? Preggos can’t lift.

  There was a pause before I received, Kinda hate you rn.

  I know. Please? I’ll buy u a bcn double chzburgr.

  Two chzburgrs but u suk.

  “Devi’s coming to help,” I said to Mom. She frowned as she looped back around to pack more stuff.

  “She doesn’t have to do that.”

  “No, but she does ’cause she rules. She’s the best bestie that ever bested, so. I’ll be right back. Getting her bribery cheeseburgers.”