in the Fall 2013 issue of the literary journal Minerva Rising (www.minervarising.com):
Our class
gathered in a cramped cubicle adjacent to the gym and locker rooms, which
always smelled like damp sneakers. After
lunch, while our bellies digested the cafeteria’s mystery meat of the day, we
watched black and white filmstrips about our changing bodies and the menstrual
cycle. My mother never told me about having
periods. She simply handed me a box of Kotex when I told her I’d started
bleeding “down there.”
I endured
diagrammed explanations (excluding intercourse) of how a baby ended up in my
womb as if I didn’t already know the details. I could’ve shared a few more with
the class but no one was asking. I knew
how the baby got in. I worried about how
it was going to get out, but childbirth wasn’t part of the lesson plans.
Mrs. Pratt
never called on me in class which made me nervous. At any moment I expected her to point one of
her stubby fingers at me, order me to stand up, and then she’d caution my
classmates: “Watch out! Or you’ll end up like her! These are the years for football games and
cheerleader squads, braces and acne medications, not baby bottles and diaper
rash cream!”
I chewed
my nails down to their quick because she barked facts at us as if she feared
having
them linger in her mouth too long. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to have sex
with her. She
looked too sharp around the edges and too lumpy in
the middle. She reminded me of the broken
pieces of peanut brittle my mother kept in an old cookie tin for when she
craved something sweet.
Sometimes
we could hear gym classes dribbling a basketball around the court on the other
side of the wall, or the sharp whistle of the coach while he refereed a
game. In our confined quarters we sat in
stiff rows, not one giggle amongst us.
The dim classroom hid our hot cheeks so no one could witness our
embarrassment. We knew this was
important stuff. We were being initiated
into the mysteries of womanhood, and we didn’t want to miss a moment of
it. We stared straight ahead at the
screen as Mrs. Pratt used her wooden pointer to draw our attention to the
uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, and vagina.
The clitoris wasn’t mentioned at all though its sole purpose is to
provide pleasure, but pleasure wasn’t the point. Mrs. Pratt explained menstruation using
careful, clinical terms like hormones, ovulation, and cervix. This information would make our grandparents
squirm, our mothers blush, and our dads stutter, but Mrs. Pratt never broke
stride with the delivery of her lectures.
We memorized every word so we could whisper about them later in the
library during study hall. Even me.
Many
times, I hated myself because I had risked becoming pregnant. It wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever
done. I wondered why I’d been so quick
to place my destiny into the hands of a horny guy who didn’t care about
me. I could’ve prevented his sperm from
waltzing with my egg by just saying no, but I didn’t think things through to
their biological conclusion. After the
shame cooled on my cheeks, I wished that someone, anyone, had provided me with
the
guidance I needed long before I removed my panties
and engaged in sex. Sex was for
grownups, not us. That message came a
little late for me.
--------
When my
pregnancy couldn’t be hidden any longer, Bert Dumais, the assistant principal,
called me into his office over the school’s intercom. He frowned toward my belly, motioned me
toward a straight-backed chair, and took his place behind a desk littered with
stacks of documents and file folders.
Gray file cabinets lined the wall behind him, and framed photographs – I
assumed of his wife and kids – looked ready to topple off the edge of the
desk. I imagined that somewhere in the
mess lay a folder with my name on it, stamped:
PREGNANT. I had never been called
into Mr. Dumais’ office before, and I waited:
eyes downcast, tense, afraid, and hot with worry. I sneaked a quick peek at Mr. Dumais’ neatly
combed hair, starched white shirt, and paisley tie. Shuffling papers around his desk, he cleared
his throat as if he didn’t quite know how to begin. Finally, he suggested I stay home for the
remainder of the school term. I could
return the following fall and begin my sophomore year.
“I can
find a tutor for you,” he said, clearing his throat a second time. “The District will pay for it, and that way
you won’t fall behind in your studies.”
“I don’t
want to stay home.” I stared past his
left ear at a calendar hanging on the wall.
October’s jaunty picture of jack-o´-lanterns piled around an
old-fashioned hay wagon seemed silly in an office full of discipline and
rules.
“Well, yes,
I can understand that, but you’re a potential health risk for the school, and a
poor example for the other girls. We
can’t be held responsible in the event of a medical emergency because of your,
uh, condition.” He scratched a quick
note on a notepad as though part of him
dealt with me, and another part had already jumped
ahead to the next task on his day’s agenda.
“My doctor
said it’s okay for me to be in school,” I said.
“I don’t need a tutor.” I couldn’t imagine a stranger walking into our
kitchen and explaining math problems over the cup of instant coffee I knew my
mother would offer. I didn’t want to sit
at home all day twiddling my thumbs and waiting for the baby to be born. I was pregnant, not contagious. As for being a poor example to the other
girls, I would bet a dollar that I wasn’t the only one having sex. The difference was that no other girl had
gotten pregnant – that I knew of.
“Any kids
giving you a hard time?” Mr. Dumais scratched
another note on his pad. “Because if
they are . . .” His voice softened with the promise of punishment if anyone had
been out of line.
“No. No one is bothering me.” I watched dust motes float in a wedge of
morning sun falling across the carpet and avoided Mr. Dumais’ eyes. He didn’t look like he believed me. He was right.
This wasn’t the whole truth. Alan
Chouinard passed me a grimy slip of paper in English class when Mr. Gallagher
wasn’t looking. “Are
you prignant?” had been
written on the paper in a blocky, boyish script. Blushing, I had nodded, ignoring the twitter
of smirks among the boys clustered around Alan.
“You
wouldn’t feel more comfortable studying at home?” Mr. Dumais pushed a stack of files to a
corner of his desk.
“I want to
stay in school.” I ignored the urge to
chew my fingernails; tucked my hands into my lap instead.
“Very
well,” Mr. Dumais said, “we’ll see how things go for now. But I don’t want the school
held responsible for any medical problems. Bring me a note from your doctor confirming
that it’s okay for you to attend school.”
He picked up his pen again, dismissing me.
I had won
with another partial lie. I hated the
students who whispered about me behind their hands in the cafeteria, and the
others who gawked when we filed into the gymnasium for pep rallies to cheer the
football players before a game. Five
months along, I stood out against the backdrop of skinny girls like a chicken
in a stationery shop. Nevertheless, I
needed the sense of normalcy school provided me. School was where my friends—the ones who hadn’t
abandoned me—and I griped about teachers and homework. We never discussed my
pregnancy but giggled over our lunch trays and journeyed together toward that
magical day in our future: Graduation.
Hiding at home wasn’t an option.
Neither was dropping out. I planned
to graduate on schedule and attend college.
I clutched
my books against my chest and escaped to class.
Though I had declared confidence to Mr. Dumais, inside I didn’t feel so
sure about completing the year’s academic work.
I had six classes to worry about:
English, French I, Algebra I, Physical Science, Geography, and Health. Good
grades would prove that being pregnant didn’t mean I was dumb or a loser.
When my
alarm clock rang every morning at six, I forced myself out of bed and my
pajamas and stood naked for a few moments in front of the full-length mirror in
my bedroom. I stared at my round belly
as if it belonged to someone else – a borrowed outfit that didn’t fit quite right
– and then I hurried to get dressed.
As for the
teachers, they left me alone as long as I did my work. Their faces, when they called on me in class,
wore neutral expressions lacking disapproval or interest. Only one cared. Thornton Moore taught French; at first
glance, he didn’t look like a likely advocate for a pregnant teenager. He was a tall broad fellow with a white
beard, mustache, and thinning dark hair that entertained streaks of gray. Whenever a student annoyed him, he loomed
over their desk in his black suit like a great black bird and said: “Patience is a virtue of which I am exceedingly
short.” He didn’t have to speak
twice. His habit of sliding his glasses
back and forth along the bridge of his nose amused me. Every morning before the beginning of class,
while late students dilly-dallied in the hallway, he took a moment to stand by
my desk – no one else’s. Lowering his
voice, he asked, Comment allez-vous, Mademoiselle?
Bien,
Monsieur, I would reply, basking in
his attention and reviewing the vocabulary words I had memorized the night
before. Speaking French tasted like
vanilla ice cream – a sweet break from pimples and blood pressure checks. French was safe too. It was a language of reciting verbs and nouns
without expressing my thoughts and feelings:
Bonjour, Au revoir, Quelle heure est-il? C’est dix heures.
Mr. Moore
scribbled encouragement on my exams – tres
bien fait, tu fais de tres bon
travail, excellent – and smiled
at me in the cafeteria. I knew by the
way he looked me right in the eye that he didn’t think less of me because of
the baby.
--------
One frosty
moonlit night in late October, around eleven o’clock, I lay in bed reading by
the light of my bedside lamp.
Occasionally the furnace ticked on and off; otherwise the house was
quiet. Still. Upstairs, my parents slept. And then it happened, just as my doctor had
promised it would: A fluttering. Butterflies playing tag in my belly. Once.
Twice. Again. The baby was moving. A baby.
Alive. With fingers and toes like
mine.
--------
Lady Luck
favored me with a gift. I was browsing
the high school’s library shelves for something good to read over the
weekend. The neat stacks of books
surrounded me like cherished friends, and the clank and clang of the heat
registers provided a cozy backdrop for studying. Whiffs of pungent ink from the mimeograph machine
behind the checkout desk reminded me of grade school – a time when I didn’t
have anything to think about but recess and skipping rope.
My stomach
clenched with surprise when the bold black letters spelling ADOPTION
along a book’s spine caught my eye.
Pulling the slim volume from the shelf, I headed for a table in the back
corner away from other students. I had
thirty minutes before my next class.
Arranging
my algebra homework around me for camouflage, I opened the adoption book and
scanned its Table of Contents. Quickly I turned to Chapter Two: Giving a Baby Up
for Adoption. Flipping pages,
I rushed to read everything at once.
According to the book, if I gave the baby up for adoption I would have
to give my voluntary written consent to surrender
and release all of
my parental rights.
I paused. I didn’t feel like a
parent. Parents were adults like Mum and
Dad and my teachers; grownups who always knew what to do. I didn’t know what to do. I flipped more
pages. Once I gave away my rights, the
Department of Health and Welfare or a child-placing agency would then assume
full responsibility for the baby. All I
needed to do is sign my name on a dotted line, and I could leave the hospital
with empty arms. It almost seemed too
easy.
It surprised
me to learn that mothers weren’t encouraged to see or hold their babies after
giving birth. Even a glimpse might make
them question their decision and delay the adoption process. The mother couldn’t even know whether her
baby was a boy or girl. How, I wondered, could I live my whole life without knowing? Without saying hello or good-bye? It didn’t seem fair. Also, I wouldn’t have any say in who adopted the
baby or where they lived. I would have
to trust someone else’s judgment in choosing a good mother. And father – something I couldn’t provide.
I stopped
reading. Giving the baby up for adoption
was tempting – and scary. Nine months
of sharing blood and air and then an uncertain future filled with wondering
what the baby was doing, whether it was sick or well, cold or hungry, happy or
sad. I wouldn’t see its first tooth
peeking through its pink gums or celebrate its first steps across the floor before
toppling into my arms. How could I turn
my back on these things? I wasn’t sure I
could if the time came to sign my name. Good
girls stepped-up and owned their mistakes.
Isn’t that what Mrs. Merckens had taught us in first grade? Good girls apologized. They did what they had to do to make things
right. Giving the baby away would be
cheating – getting away scot-free.
Keeping
the baby would mean dirty diapers, spit-up, and drool. No more free time to skip rocks across the
frog pond or pick blackberries out behind the barn. No trips to the beach with my friends. Curling
up in bed with a good book and reading a rainy Saturday afternoon away? Not with a baby in the house. Every day there would be feedings and
burpings, baby bottles to sterilize and formula to mix, and piles of dirty
diapers to wash.
I might be
up half the night rocking the baby to sleep if it had colic or the sniffles or
sore gums from teething, and we didn’t have a rocking chair in the house. My sister’s yawns and bloodshot eyes didn’t
look pretty after a sleepless night when my niece started cutting teeth. I often comforted Laurie myself with a
chilled teething ring Joyce kept in the refrigerator. Many times I changed Laurie’s diapers
too. However, baby-sitting didn’t make
me a mother. What magic would?
How could
I stay in school and care for a baby too?
And then there was the issue of money.
My parents were already paying for my doctor appointments. No telling what the hospital bill was going
to be, but I assumed it wouldn’t be cheap.
Too young to get a real job, I didn’t even have a driver’s license. Baby-sitting Laurie on the weekends wasn’t
nearly enough money to support a baby.
I couldn’t
imagine giving the baby away. I couldn’t
imagine keeping it either. I wanted to
do the right thing, but what was the right thing to do? I found comfort in books, but this one offered
little for my tangled thoughts. I tucked
it back onto the shelf.
Likewise, the book hadn’t told me how
to approach the idea of adoption with my mother. I needed to do it – soon – but I kept putting
it off. Mum could be grouchy, and I was
afraid of how she might react. You never
knew with her. We didn’t discuss the
baby beyond my monthly checkups. Mum
read Good Housekeeping in the waiting
room while Dr. Jones examined me, noting my blood pressure and weight
gain. He measured the height of my belly
with a plastic tape measure to determine how much the baby had grown. “Good,” he always said, stuffing the tape
back into his pocket. “Good.” I half-expected him to pat me on the head for
a job well done. Sometimes I wished he
would.
Afterwards, in the car, Mum always asked the same question: “Well, what did he say?” She turned the
ignition key and, looking over her right shoulder, backed out of the parking
lot and into the street.
“He said
everything’s fine.” I leaned my head
back against the seat and closed my eyes.
Hearing
this reassurance, my mother turned her attention to navigating the slippery,
snowy roads in the afternoon’s fading light.
An invisible door slammed shut between us. I didn’t know how to open it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. It might mean talking about why I had been
having sex on the sly. I couldn’t do
it. We rode home in silence.
My father
didn’t accompany us to my doctor appointments.
He pretended the baby didn’t exist; the larger my belly grew the less
his eyes ventured below my chin. I had
assumed that once Mum announced I was pregnant, Dad would take charge and make
the father accountable – make me accountable – but he did nothing. If my parents discussed me at all, I never
knew about it. Instead, Dad became
formal and polite:
“Don’t
slip on the ice.”
“I won’t.”
“How was
school today?”
“Good.”
As
December slipped into January, Dad started going to bed right after the evening
news. I wanted him to remain downstairs with his hands loose in his lap and
feet crossed at the ankles. I needed his
forgiveness, any sign that I was still his little girl who had followed him
around the farm like a puppy. His absence in the room hurt. He doesn’t love me anymore, I thought,
brushing away tears before my mother could see them.
The rest
of the time silence seeped into the spaces between Dad and me until we looked
at anything in the room – the couch, the clock, the TV – instead of each
other. When the silence stretched into
seconds, then unbearable minutes, one of us turned away, suddenly remembering
we had something important that needed to be done right that minute. Another
door slamming shut.
“I’m
thinking of giving the baby up for adoption,” I finally informed my mother. We
were folding clean bath towels at the kitchen table. My father, recovering from a bad chest cold,
snoozed upstairs in bed.
“You’re
giving that baby up over my dead body!”
Mum paused, mid-fold, frowning at me as though I had gone crazy.
“I didn’t
say I’m going to. I said I’m thinking
about it.” Already, I regretted saying
anything at all.
“There’s
nothing to think about. You got yourself
pregnant, ole girl, now you can damn well
raise the baby.”
Mum dropped a towel, leaving it in a heap on the floor.
“But –
what about school?” I picked up the
towel, still warm from the dryer.
Smoothing it flat with my hands, I fingered a loose thread instead of
looking at my mother.
“You should’ve
thought about that before you went out and did what you shouldn’t have been
doing.” Mum folded the edges of a
washcloth together with short, angry strokes.
“I don’t
want to quit school.”
“Then
you’d better find someone to baby-sit.
I’m not quitting my job to do it.
Now, I don’t want to hear any more about it.” Mum grabbed the last towel out of the wicker
basket. Pressing it into a neat square,
she tossed it onto the growing pile between us.
I fled.
In my
room, I stared out the window at the snowy field behind the house – bare acres
of white and cold – and hated my mother.
What kind of mother was SHE? I
needed her help, and the best she could do was throw a hissy fit. How could I bring a baby into the house to
live with her? Perhaps giving it away
was best – for everyone.
My answer,
as many important ones do, arrived when I least expected it: in the middle of a geography exam on a
blue-skied morning. I couldn’t remember
the capital city of some foreign country, so I watched out the window as a crow
flew across the football field. I longed
to place my head down on the desk’s cool surface and sleep.
When the
baby kicked against my ribs, I shifted in my seat and stroked my belly. Then, the whisper of a tiny foot brushed
against my palm. Heat spread throughout
my body until I tingled with certainty.
I would keep the baby, stay in school, and earn my diploma right beside
my friends – no matter what. I would find a way. I may have flunked this particular geography
exam, but there would be others. I would
do better next time.
After school, I told my mother right
away. “I’m keeping the baby.” I wiggled
out of my coat and tossed it over the back of a kitchen chair.
“Hang up your coat,” she said, and kept
peeling potatoes.
--------
Two days
past Valentine’s Day – my due date – my mother became impatient with
waiting. She snapped over the smallest
things: snow tracked across the living
room rug, a chipped coffee cup, and the TV Guide moved from its
customary spot by the television. She
hovered around me as though my belly might crack open like an egg and drop the
baby out onto the linoleum. How she survived
six pregnancies without having a nervous breakdown was a mystery. I hid behind
homework. Dad took long naps.
I didn’t
like the waiting either. My ankles
swelled, and my breasts spilled over the cups of my bra like overripe
fruit. The baby’s nighttime gymnastics
kept me awake most of the night. Any twitch or twinge within my body made my heart
race, and I froze, certain that the baby was coming at last. When I realized it was just the baby kicking
again, I didn’t know whether to sigh with relief or cry with disappointment. At
school I waddled from class to class. Afternoon backaches protested the baby’s
weight resting against my hipbones. Frequent trips to the bathroom earned
teachers’ frowns.
Childbirth
became the latest taboo topic creeping about the house alongside my parents and
me. My preconceptions of giving birth
came from watching old westerns on television. Pioneer women in labor sweated profusely
and contorted their faces in agony. After
a commercial break, a squalling infant wrapped in sheepskin would be placed
into the weary mother’s outstretched arms and she’d smile.
Finally,
just past midnight on February 17, I awakened when a mild cramp rippled through
my lower back and belly. Dr. Jones had
mentioned that the beginning of labor might feel like menstrual cramps. He was right.
When it happened again, and then again, it didn’t take me long to
conclude that I must be in labor.
Hurrying out to the kitchen in bare feet, I switched on lights and an
outside lamp. The weatherman on TV had
forecasted snow. Sure enough, it was
snowing – hard. Snow buried the front
steps, and it lay like a wooly white blanket over my mother’s car. The road hadn’t been plowed either. Pacing the floor, I timed my next two
contractions like Dr. Jones taught me.
They were fifteen minutes apart.
My mother, tying her bathrobe’s sash tight around her waist, appeared at
the top of the stairway in the kitchen.
“What are
you doing up?” She squinted against the
light.
“I’m having contractions.” I winced with the beginning of another
one.
“Oh, my
god. Let’s head for the hospital.” Mum whirled back into the darkness behind
her.
“It’s
snowing.”
“We’d better get going then.” We had an hour’s
drive ahead of us.
My
mother’s face looked grim in the dashboard’s greenish glow as she hunched over
the steering wheel. She had wrapped an
old flowered kerchief around the pink curlers in her hair and knotted it
tightly beneath her chin. It looked like
a miniature bow tie above the collar of her navy wool coat, which would have
made me laugh in different circumstances.
The car shouldered the storm as best it could as the wind blew snow gusts
across the road. We didn’t speak the
whole way to the hospital, as though our silence would keep us out of the
ditch.
Gripping
the plastic handle of my small suitcase with both hands, I mentally checked off
everything I had packed: a flannel
nightgown, a borrowed robe from my sister, terrycloth slippers, underwear, a
sanitary belt, Kotex, a hairbrush, a toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorant, a novel,
and clothes for the baby. Whenever a new
contraction clamped down on my belly, I focused on the windshield wipers
whipping back and forth to clear the glass.
The warm air pouring out of the heater’s vents kept the car too hot, but
without it snowflakes would ice up the windows.
I wiped clammy sweat from my forehead and repeated a silent mantra to
myself and the baby: We’ll be there soon. We’ll be there soon. Fear of what might or might not lurk behind the next
contraction made my stomach queasy. I
distracted myself by musing: What will the baby be like? I hope it’s a girl. Is Dad thinking about me? He hadn’t gotten up before we left the
house. What if no one ever loves me because I have a baby? I want my body back. I have a math test tomorrow. What will it feel like to be a mother? Like
playing dolls? I remembered Susie, a
Christmas doll I had treated horribly, butchering her hair with scissors and
abandoning her in a mud puddle. What kind of mother will I be?
The
hospital’s brightly lit parking lot finally appeared through the trees. My
mother fishtailed through a slippery four-way intersection, and the hospital, a
six-story brick building, came into view.
Driving right up to its entrance, Mum honked the car’s horn. A night watchman, wearing a black cap and bulky
black overcoat, shuffled out through the snow while my mother rolled down her
window. “Hurry up,” she yelled. “My daughter’s in labor.”
“I’ll get
a nurse.” The man trotted back inside,
returning with a wheelchair. Gripping my elbow, the man ushered me into the chair
despite my protests that I could walk just fine. Mum parked the car while a nurse wheeled me
toward the elevator. It finally hit me:
the baby really was on its way.
The elevator stopped at the maternity ward, and the nurse took me to a
small room. “Get undressed and make
yourself comfortable,” she said, handing me a plain white johnny. “You’re going to be here a while.”
I had
barely tied the strings on the johnny into loose square-knots before another
nurse arrived to take my temperature, feel my pulse, check my blood pressure, draw
tubes of blood, and, horror of horrors, shave my pubic hair and give me an
enema. No one had prepared me for that, and I wondered if other nasty
surprises lay ahead. Folding back the
top sheet, I settled my weight onto the edge of the bed so I could take stock
of the room. There wasn’t much to
see: cream colored walls, heavy drapes,
a bold-faced clock, a shiny tiled floor, two straight-backed chairs, and a
bathroom I already knew too intimately. Snow pattered against the window.
Every
fifteen or twenty minutes a cheery nurse strapped a blood pressure cuff around
my arm and checked the IV-drip delivering glucose drop-by-drop into one of my
veins. “You’re doing fine,” she
reassured me each time with a motherly pat to my knee before bustling back out
into the hallway. Minutes ticked the morning away. My mother, standing at the window, wrung her
hands and fretted about the weather. A
nurse finally sent her out to the waiting room to watch television. I timed my contractions. Dr. Jones stopped by on his late morning
rounds to check on me. “Still a ways to
go,” he said. “We’ll let Mother Nature
work her magic.”
Magic? Nothing felt like magic to
me. I tossed and turned until the stiff
sheets chafed my elbows. Contractions
gripped me tightly in their fist, and I climbed out of bed seeking relief by
pacing the room. A nurse coaxed me back
into bed and gave me a shot of pain medication. Pulling up a chair, she rubbed
my back and murmured encouragement: “Relax
into the contractions. They hurt worse
when you fight them.” She reminded me
that each contraction brought the baby closer to being born.
At
three-thirty, urges to push the baby out grew intense. Dr. Jones arrived with smiles and
efficiency. “It’s time to go to the
delivery room,” he said, touching my arm.
A nurse wheeled me into the hallway, past my mother’s panicky eyes, and
into a room where my feet were strapped into cold stirrups. Dr. Jones urged me to
breathe-push-rest-breathe-push-rest-breathe-push-rest-breathe-pushpushpush
until I feared my insides would gush out along with the baby.
Nothing
happened.
“We’re
going to give you a little gas,” Dr. Jones said, “so we can help you and the
baby.”
A tall man
wearing a white lab coat fit a small plastic mask over my nose and mouth. “Count backwards from 10 to 1 for me,” he
said. I got to 8 and then – oblivion.
I woke up to
an infant’s cries. “You have a beautiful
baby girl,” Dr. Jones told me. “A nurse
will bring her to you as soon as she’s cleaned up a bit.”
A
girl! Groggy, I absorbed the news. It seemed like hours before my baby was
placed into my arms. Swaddled in a soft
pink blanket, she was the color of a bad sunburn. Pale, damp fuzz covered her scalp. Her eyes and fists were scrunched tight. She felt lighter than I had expected – no
heavier than a housecat – and was a warm bundle against my chest. She wailed.
I didn’t know what to do.
“Hello,” I said. It was a poor
greeting but all I could manage. A nurse
whisked her away so I could rest.
My mother,
anxious to return home, appeared in my hospital room to say good-bye. “Your father will want his supper,” she said,
lingering near the foot of the bed for a moment. “I’ll see the baby next time.”
“Don’t
forget to call Mr. Dumais at the high school,” I reminded her. “Tell him I’ll be back
in school as soon as Dr. Jones says I can go.”
“I’ll call
him first thing in the morning,” Mum promised, kissing my cheek. “I’ll see you in a few days to bring you
home.”
After she
left, a nurses’ aide brought chicken noodle soup and toast on a tray. I swallowed a few bites, but soon tears
dampened the front of my nightgown. They
may have been a side effect of anesthesia.
Mostly though, the knot of anxiety I had carried for several weeks
loosened with teary relief. We had made
it – my baby and I – over the first hurdle of our lives together. Now my body, and life, could return to
normal; whatever normal would be with the added responsibility of a child. I pushed the soup away and slept.
