Belly Up Page 7

  Mom raked her fingers through her fine blond hair, a weary smile on her mouth. “Yeah, okay. She’s a good kid.”

  “Yeah, she is. And don’t smoke while I’m gone. I’ll smell it. I’ve got a super sniffer right now.”

  “You’re not my real mom,” my mother said before sticking her tongue out. I climbed into the car with its first load of boxes and headed back to the golden arches, where I bought Devi not only her bacon double cheeseburgers, but myself another pair of regular cheeseburgers because apparently I and the fetus were really feeling them.

  By the time I returned home, Devi was already there, talking to my mom. She loomed over her by a half a foot, looking taller than usual because of her cutoff jean shorts and legs for days. Mom’s capris and six-inch inseam didn’t stand a chance there.

  I climbed from the car and jostled the bag Devi’s way.

  “I’m not fetching,” she said. “It’s pretty messed up that you think I would.”

  “That’s not what I meant!”

  “I know.” She grinned and swiped the bag from me. Seeing the extra cheeseburgers, she asked no questions, just taking her due and handing me the rest. I unpacked another burger. Mom’s brow lifted and she waved her finger at me accusingly.

  “Hey, there, Miss Second Lunch. That’s not much better than a cigarette. It’s a food cigarette.”

  “In your butt,” I said.

  Which made no sense, but I was at a loss for words.

  “No, in your butt,” Mom replied.

  Because I got the immature and stupid from somewhere.

  “I’m eating for two,” I reminded her before sitting on the front step of the apartment building. It’d probably be the last time I’d do so, and it would have been nice to be nostalgic about the ten years we’d lived there. But it was August and I was five feet from trash barrels that smelled so bad I was pretty sure Oscar the Grouch had actually died inside one of them.

  “That’s why you got two cheeseburgers earlier—one for each of you, I thought.” Mom cast me a smirk as she got back to hauling. She’d brought some of the boxes down to the curb while I’d been gone, and she proceeded to drop them into the trunk, Tetris-ing them so she could get as much stuff in as possible. Devi stepped in to help once she’d sucked down her two cheeseburgers, using her jean shorts as a napkin.

  “Classy,” I said.

  “Well, I wouldn’t have to be so classy if someone had gotten me some napkins.”

  “Soz, wifey.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Soz.”

  The afternoon was filled with three-way chatter and jokes. Most of the furniture wasn’t moving to Mormor’s because Mormor had everything we’d need already. Mom had given it all away to friends and charity. The only big item to move was our TV, because Mom was pretty squarely over Mormor’s ancient box TV with its rabbit-ears antenna.

  “I’ll bring my flat-screen TV,” Mom had said during that liver-pâté brunch from hell. “It should fit in the TV cabinet no problem.”

  “Oh? Why do we need it?”

  “Because it’s two years old, and yours is older than Sara?”

  Mormor had snorted. “Old things aren’t good now? Why not, Astrid? I’m old, but I work perfectly fine, just like that TV. Should we throw me away, too?”

  “Ma! Jesus Christ. It’s just a TV.”

  Taking the lord’s name in vain resulted in a Keds sneaker being launched from the pantry that hit my mom squarely in the shoulder—not hard enough to really hurt, but it was certainly startling. Mom jumped right out of her skin.

  “I am a good Lutheran,” Mormor said. “Leave Christ out of this discussion.”

  Mom picked up the shoe from the kitchen floor and whipped it back at the pantry. “Don’t go chucking your shoes around, old woman! And don’t think I didn’t hear you just call the garbage man an effing idiot twenty minutes ago, except you didn’t use effing.”

  “He always leaves my garbage lids on the curb. How hard is it to put them back where they belong! And I didn’t say...effing idiot. Not exactly.” Mormor stomped out of the pantry, carrying her freshly thrown shoe in her hand. “I don’t like the garbage man.”

  “‘Din jävla idiot’ means—”

  “I know what it means! But he is an asshole and I hate him. But that doesn’t mean I want to hear it from my daughter’s mouth, no matter how old she is. Do you want the shoe again?” Mormor waved the sneaker under Mom’s nose before slipping it back onto her foot.

  Mom wasn’t impressed. “No, but you’re taking the TV, whether you like it or not.”

  And there we were, packing the TV. Or there Devi and Mom were, packing the TV. I held doors open while they maneuvered their way outside with it and then somehow managed to fit it onto the passenger’s seat. I’d be riding to Mormor’s for the official move-in with Devi.

  I glanced up at the side of our brick apartment building. It’d been home for a while, a good home at that, but I was ready to leave it behind, just like I was ready to leave the town and 99 percent of its denizens behind. No Aaron. No Samantha. No tiny little high school where everyone knew what everyone else was doing all the time. All the worthwhile things were coming with me to Stonington.

  Devi. My mom. My stuff.

  My fetus.

  And a big-ass forty-two-inch flat-screen.

  * * *

  The move-in went exactly how Mom and I knew it would, which meant Mormor was a huge pain, barking orders about where everything should go and making those of us actually doing the moving and unpacking crazy. Dishes were to be put in the pantry and only the pantry until Mormor could go through them and decide if they deserved a spot among the Williams Sonoma elite inside her cabinets. Linens would receive the same scrutiny, so put them in the upstairs hallway until sorting time. Although she hadn’t even wanted the new TV, its placement on the new wooden TV stand—which she had bought on her own because she didn’t trust Mom to honor the farmhouse decor—had to be precise or it threw off her entire aesthetic.

  “A little to the left, a little more to the left, a little more to the left” would haunt me in my nightmares.

  Suffice to say, she’d talked so much during the move, she’d sucked most of the oxygen out of the house, leaving the rest of us gasping. By the time Devi brought the last of my stuff up into my new room, she was hot, sweaty and super annoyed.

  “I think I owe you a few more cheeseburgers,” I said sheepishly, folding my T-shirts and putting them in my new dresser.

  “Yeah, like a few thousand. That woman needs an exorcism.” Devi shoved a pile of my clothes up onto my pillows so she could sprawl out on her back on my new bed, her arms to either side of her body. “It’s no different than Bubbe, though. Not really. I’m guessing with age comes lots of opinions.”

  “All of them. All of the opinions everywhere exist inside aging female bodies.”

  “Something to look forward to, I guess,” she said. I couldn’t argue it.

  We went quiet for a few minutes, Devi catching her breath, me putting my clothes away. Downstairs, Mom and Mormor were bickering, which meant everything was fine. I’d have been far more concerned if they weren’t fighting, to be honest, because it seemed to be their modus operandi.

  “How are you doing?” Devi asked, her voice quieter and more serious than it had been a little while ago. “Like, with everything. You okay?”

  “About the move? Sure. Living with Mormor will be interesting, but we visit so much it’s not going to be too much different, I don’t think.”

  “And about school? We go back in two and a half weeks.”

  “Fine, I guess. I’m not thinking about it too much. Well, I mean, I am—I’ve got a meeting with a guidance counselor and we’re going to talk about what we need to do for delivery. I’ll have the kid before graduation.”

  “Cool, cool. Good to have a plan. So, I told my pare
nts.”

  I stopped folding to look at her, a Metallica T-shirt clutched in my hand. “And?”

  “They were cool. Asked if there was anything they could do for you. I probably should have talked to you before I said anything, but it...yeah. I haven’t told anyone else. I wouldn’t.”

  I wasn’t exactly annoyed with her, especially not after she’d helped me out that day, but she was right—she should have asked me.

  “Well, if you’re going to tell anyone else—”

  “—which I’m not.”

  “Right, but.” I cleared my throat and went back to arranging T-shirts. “If you do, please ask me first.”

  “I will. I’m sorry.”

  “No sweat.”

  It was true for the most part, that things were fine, but she must have been worried that I was fronting because she got up from the bed and walked up behind me to hug me. Her chin dropped onto my shoulder.

  “You got this. We got this. All of us.”

  “You sound like my mom and grandma.” Just as I said that, the two of them got loud about something downstairs, each of them trying to out-bitch each other seconds before there was a hard thwacking sound, which was probably a shoe hitting the wall because Mormor was out of control. “Okay, maybe not exactly like them, but the solidarity thing, you sound like them.”

  “It’s a new beginning. For you, for your mom and Mormor, and for the squirt.”

  “The squirt?”

  “Yeah.” She poked my belly. “This little thing. It’s the CIIIIIRCLE OF LIIIIIFE...”

  “Oh, shut the hell up, Devi.”

  PART TWO:

  The cheeseburger queen,

  my mom the Juggalo

  and a leaf on the wind.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mormor had been a plague on mankind for most of the day, but she made up for it by cooking ärtsoppa that night and inviting Devi to dinner. You can tell food is good when four people who talk as much as we do were silent for the duration of the meal.

  Not a peep. It was darned good soup.

  “You know, for Satan, she’s a pretty good cook,” Devi whispered right before she took off for the night. I waved at her retreating taillights and then went back to my room. Mom had left a couple more boxes of my stuff in my new room to unpack, but I was too tired. At least I had an explanation for my toddler-like need for all the sleep, forever. Who knew a newbie fetus could be so demanding already?

  Now, imagine them at two and smearing poop on the walls. Poopcasso, the mural artist.

  ...am I ready for that?

  Wait. Is anyone ready for that?

  These were the thoughts that plagued me as I drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  The sound of a lawnmower outside of my window plagued me the next morning.

  A glance at my phone told me it was seven in the morning. When I shuffled over to the window to see what kind of weirdo started their day that early that way, I was completely unsurprised to discover Mormor riding a dinosaur-sized John Deere around, a brimmed hat on her head and her nose covered with a strip of that white sunblock stuff.

  A pee, a hair brushing because curly hair and bedhead were the worst, a bevy of yawns and I went downstairs. Mom was in the kitchen, sitting at the kitchen island, her body huddled around her mug like she’d devolved into a coffee troll in the nine hours since I’d last seen her.

  “She gets up at five, Serendipity,” Mom said. “Who does that?”

  “Mormor.” I couldn’t have the caffeine—doctor’s orders that I had to limit my intake—so I started the water for decaf tea and popped some toast into the toaster. I wasn’t super nauseated yet, but time would tell on whether or not my gut rebelled. At least I was on the cusp of the second trimester. According to the internet, that was the “good” time when nausea decreased and you got to “enjoy” the baby growing inside of you.

  I wasn’t sure enjoyment had factored into any of the baby business yet, but if the part about being extra horny was true, at least I’d be smiling a lot more.

  Mom grumbled as she got up from her stool, shuffling over to the cabinet and preparing a teacup for me because she loved me. “We’ve got your ultrasound at ten. I guess she could have picked a worse day to drag me from the crypt early.”

  “Hey, just remember, you picked living here.”

  “No, our finances did, when I thought I was sending a kid to college next year.”

  Mom was just playing around, yet that stopped me cold. Her, too, for that matter. I glanced back at her, at her profile. Her brow was furrowed, the corners of her mouth dipped into a frown.

  “Not that you can’t go back to school after you have the kid,” she added, trying to make it less doom and gloom.

  Except you didn’t go back to school after you had me. It was too much work because you were a single mom. Like I’d be.

  I nodded and swallowed, my dreams of getting into an Ivy League school turning to ash right before my eyes. It’s funny how that hadn’t occurred to me until right that moment. “Right. And I might still go the adoption route and can maybe go a semester late or something.”

  “Right.” The kettle screeched. Mom turned away from me so she could pour hot water over the tea infuser. “And if you decide to keep it—”

  “If I decide to keep them,” I interjected. “It feels weird to me.”

  “Okay, sure. If that’s what you prefer.”

  I nodded, pulling my toast from the toaster and slathering it with butter.

  “But what I was saying is single moms go back to school all the time,” she said. “Maybe not right away, but they do. Programs at night. Or maybe even the day, somewhere local. Mormor certainly seems to want to help out. I can babysit at night. We’ve got some options.”

  “A state university or whatever. I mean, there’s one fifteen minutes away.”

  “Sure! That’d work.” Mom slid the tea my way, her fingers brushing mine. I looked up at her. The strain written on her face likely mirrored mine, but I couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t just one of us abandoning hopes of my going to an Ivy League.

  * * *

  Ten o’clock, in Dr. Cardiff’s office, my pants waistband rolled down so far I was afraid someone would see my pubes, a sheet over my lap to ensure that didn’t happen.

  There wasn’t a lot of dignity in medical care, I was discovering.

  “How are you hanging in there, Serendipity?” Dr. Cardiff asked me, the ultrasound wand poised above my skin.

  It was a fair question. I hadn’t talked much since they’d squirted the cold conductive lube over my lower stomach. There were a lot of feelings going on, tangling up inside of me and stealing most of my words. I was afraid—feeling a little dread, even—because there was no going back after this. This was more “real” than the results of a pee stick test or blood test. No take backsies, no hiding from the truth. I was about to see irrevocable results of my truck fumbling.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  “Cool. Let’s do this.”

  Dr. Cardiff placed the monitor against my skin, on the side of my stomach. It was coldish, like the jelly had been, and I winced.

  “There will be some pressure,” she said, and there was. Not enough to make me run screaming from the room, but it was momentarily uncomfortable. I forgot all about that when she arced her hand around, pressed and found the magical spot.

  There it was, on the screen. The jelly bean. I stared at it, my brain blanking much the same way it had when Dr. Bhatia had told me I was pregnant. It was too much to process for one meager mind, but then my mother gasped beside me, breaking my pseudo-trance.

  “Whoa. They’re kinda cute. Like a twitchy little alien blob,” she said.

  What I wanted to say but couldn’t articulate quite yet was that this was my twitchy little alien blob, and that made
all the difference in the world.

  Literally.

  All that cliché crap about having preggo baby feels? Yeah, it totally happened.

  Something, something, papas and preaching.

  Thank you, Mom’s obsession with Madonna.

  “Everything’s looking good,” Dr. Cardiff said. “All visual signs are a go.”

  “And there’s only one kid! That calls for party hats,” Mom said. “I love you, Sara, but if you’d made a litter, I’d have to sell you to the circus.”

  Still, I didn’t say anything, instead absorbing every detail I could from the shivering image on the screen. Dr. Cardiff eyed me over the rim of her teal tortoiseshell glasses. She coordinated her glasses to her outfits, her button-down teal shirt, a black necktie circling her throat. “We good?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” I managed, voice thick. I hadn’t planned on crying, but the tears happened anyway, wetting my cheeks and dribbling off my chin. There was a tiny person up on the monitor staring back at me. Okay, not really staring because I don’t think they had eyeballs yet, but whatever. It was my baby. Me and some mystery guy named Jack had created a little ball of weird cells and that weird ball of cells would one day have hopes and dreams and maybe an appreciation of crappy T-shirts like their mom and F-150s like their dad because I knew pretty much nothing else about him other than the beer-and-truck thing.

  My mom sniffled suspiciously beside me. I looked over, and she, too, was water-working it up looking at the jelly bean.

  “...I cry at weddings, too, okay?” she said, defensively.

  “What? I’m crying. It’s fine.”

  Dr. Cardiff nudged a box of tissues our way, some parts kindness, some parts sparing herself having to look at two ugly criers, I’m sure.

  “We ready for a heartbeat?” Dr. Cardiff asked.

  “Yeah. Yes. Please.” I smiled at her and blew my nose.

  She turned a knob and seconds later, we heard the heartbeat. That murmur was in actuality tiny, inaudible, but thanks to the marvels of modern medicine, it filled the room. A strong, steady, surprisingly fast murmur that pounded in my ears. It was the sound of life that existed inside of my life. It was...lifeception.