by Alice Carina
"Who's the father?" He asked again, louder, letting me know that his patience was running thin.
"Jeffrey," Patty's voice shook, "maybe you should-"
"Who's the father?!" He screamed, both of his hands clenching dangerously close to my baby.
My eyes snapped up to meet the eyes of the father in question.
Kyle was looking at my father with evident fear, but his eyes quickly shifted to me when he noticed my eyes were on him. He held my gaze until his face went white.
"Just answer him," my mom pressed, obviously worried about what my dad would do if he didn't get a name to associate his anger with.
I couldn't do it. My father would've killed Kyle right there on the spot, my sister's heart would've been broken, nobody would've understood or listened, and they all would've hated me and wished I'd turned up a dead body like they'd been expecting rather than alive and pregnant by my sister's boyfriend. Whatever little bit of love and compassion I'd warranted by my absence would've been lost with the name, and it was all I had. I couldn't do it.
"Katie-" Patty, Chelsea, and my sister started at once, but I didn't want to hear anything anymore. I just wanted everybody gone as soon as possible, I wanted to be alone, lying on the cold bus stop cold and wet and bloody and half-dead and alone.
"I don't know," I interrupted them.
Despite how low my voice had been, no one asked me to repeat the words that the shame and pain on my face vouched for.
I dropped my eyes back on my fatherless baby and saw my dad's hands relax or break under my words. I knew what my words suggested; that I'd been with too many guys to be able to narrow it down to who'd gotten me pregnant, but having too many possibilities felt safer than the one impossibility they wouldn't accept.
Nobody said anything for a long time. Long, torturous minutes passed, and I felt just as cold and aching and dead as I'd felt on that bus stop.
Finally, my father pushed himself off the bed and away from me, but never quite straightening, and I took a deep breath and braced myself for all that was to come, but nothing came.
"I have never been more disappointed or ashamed in my life." He said the words calmly, matter-of-factually, in surrender.
Had he yelled at me, had he slapped me, had he pulled my hair and pounded my own head against my stomach, it wouldn't have hurt half as much as his words did.
He didn't say anything else, just closed his eyes against the pregnant disappointment and shame, turned around, and left.
I broke down after that. I vaguely saw Patty pushing everybody out and heard Doctor Forman yelling at her as he pushed a needle that I couldn't feel into my skin and everything finally went away.
*
Mom was constantly fidgeting around me; puffing my pillow, adding food to my plate, opening my window, walking behind me up the stairs, but we never talked. Her mouth was permanently occupied by a half-smile whenever I walked into a room, but she never fully opened it into a question or a remark. I could tell that she had so many questions at the tip of her tongue, just waiting for her to accidentally part her lips to pour out, but they were constantly sealed in that half-smile that unintentionally estranged me from my own mother, sealing me out as well.
Dad never talked to me either. In fact, he never even looked at me. Every time I walked into a room, he instantly walked out, he couldn't even tolerate my presence for more than two bites if we tried sitting together for a meal. If it chanced and I sneaked up on him without giving him time to leave before having to see me, or if we bumped into each other in the hall at night, his eyes never saw my face; they were always glaring at my stomach like a ticking bomb he wanted to detonate but didn't know how. Mom always sighed when he or I walked out of the room without him figuring out a way to detonate me altogether.
Josslyn avoided me, too. Unlike mom, she couldn't keep her questions to herself, so she decided – probably under Patty's and mom's instructions - that it was better for my health if she kept her curiosity and self away from me, but her eyes asked all the right questions from across the room and I found myself just as keen on avoiding her.
Patty had asked me to forget about school and any other form of stress until I was fully out of danger, but it only took three days of staying at home with my family for me to beg her to let me go back to school. My parents clearly needed the space to better absorb what was going on without my stomach pocking at them from every corner reminding them that it was there and that they couldn't do anything about it or ignore it or think of anything else.
I thought it would be easier at school. I knew people would stare and talk and ask, but I could handle other people's disappointments and curiosity, I'd never really cared much for their opinion of me, otherwise I would've probably gotten pregnant way before I did, but the looks and whispers inside my own house killed me, and I thought I could handle anything so long as it wasn't coming from my parents, but I was wrong.
Chelsea drove me to school that first day. I hadn't been to school in a very long time, it felt like years had passed since I'd last seen it. Everything looked different. Somehow, the parking lot seemed more crowded, the building looked smaller, and not a face was familiar. I looked different, too. The last time I'd been there, I was wearing a large T-shirt that hid my stomach and kept me just as invisible as I'd always been, that was pointless now; nothing could hide my stomach anymore, and as soon as I stepped out of the car, I knew I would never be invisible again.
All eyes turned to me and I wanted to slide back into the car and go back home, but I couldn't go back home, my mom's smile had actually been real when she saw me walking out of the door.
They're just staring. I told myself. Of course, they're staring. I would've stared, too.
I wanted to get inside as soon as possible, but the parking lot seemed endless as I took one slow step after the other, my gaze on my shoes until I got to class.
I thought people would just stare and talk and ask. They stared alright, and they talked too much, just not to me. By Lunch on my first day, I'd already heard almost a hundred different rumors about what I'd done. They were spoken right behind my back so I could hear them, but never to my face so that I could deny or approve them, they wouldn't have believed my denial, and they didn't need my approval, they believed everything they said as true, even the rumors that contradicted each other, I was somehow bad enough for them all to be true.
Some said I'd gotten pregnant by a teacher. I got called into the principal's office when that rumor reached him. Little did he know that by having me alone in his office on my first day back, a rumor had decided on him as the father before he let me walk out. Some said I'd agreed to be some cult's sacrifice; that I'd agreed to carry some leader's baby until it was born so that he could sacrifice it, others swore they'd seen me climb into a truck with a one-armed killer and that that was where I'd disappeared to for weeks, or that they knew the woman whose husband I'd stolen and been staying with in a fancy lake house, or that they'd seen me several times after school getting into a shaded car with some rich business man. A few guys even said that they'd been with me and that while they were sure they weren't the father, they weren't surprised that I'd gotten pregnant by someone else at all.
Words. I tried to tell myself. They're just words. They're not true, and deep down they know they're not true. They're just words. They can't hurt me. Words can't do anything. But they did. Their words destroyed a part of me I never got back, not even after I got out of high school and grew older.
I was mortified by the things they said I'd done, and was even more humiliated by how easily they believed them and said them. They'd never known me, yet somehow they decided that they knew everything about me, just because my stomach was a bit rounder and a bit bigger.
After Lunch, after people had had time to sit together and discuss me and agree on whatever they came up with about me, they finally had the courage and confidence to talk to me, but they never asked me or gave me a chance to respond.
Th
ey came up to me and threw their made-up stories right at my face, then laughed with whatever crowd they had gathered around me as they talked on and on of details they couldn't have known unless they'd been there. I kept my head low and my mouth shut.
Words. Just words.
Their words got to me, but because I didn't snap or cry or let them see it, they thought that they didn't and tried other ways to get to me. They weren't creative or clever or subtle, I felt like I was back in kindergarten when they started shoving me aside in the hall, pushing my books to the ground, pulling at my hair from behind then pretending it wasn't them when I turned around, spilling a drink in my backpack when I wasn't looking, spraying my locker, sticking notes that said the meanest things to the back of my shirt, and pounding and making mocking noises loudly against the bathroom stall when I went in to throw up.
What surprised me most was the way all the teachers turned blind eyes to what the other students were doing to me. I'd been a straight-A student my entire life and I always treated my teachers with the utmost respect and appreciation and I always thought that they really liked me, but they couldn't see beyond my stomach either. I was tired and pathetic and humiliated and in pain, but no one cared, it was as if the teachers had had their own meeting during Lunch and decided that based on the proof-less rumors, I deserved it.
When I went home that day, dad sat through a whole dinner with me. He didn't look at me or talk to me, nobody did, but he sat with me for the first time since I'd come back home from the hospital, and that was a good enough reason for me to go to school the next day. No matter how small the progress, it was worth it.
I thought that people talked about me because what they saw was new and they were just so happy it wasn't them and that they were just going to get their surprise and thankfulness out in some creative rumors and not-so-creative gestures then would forget about me. But each time I walked into the school, they acted as if they were seeing me for the first time; they gaped, they laughed, they talked, and they got more and more creative each day.
My face had taken red as its new color, I memorized the patterns of the floor in each class, and my attention was constantly on holding my tears and sickness back and trying to suck my stomach in. I was humiliated, frustrated, confused, sick, and scared. I got scared every time it rained, I got scared every time someone pushed me and I remembered the harshness of the stairs and the floor and the blood, I got scared every time other girls stood outside the stall I was in and I felt trapped, and I got scared every time I read a new rumor written about me in the girls' restroom in red lipstick that reminded me of blood. I even got scared every time I walked on the streets alone, or every time I went up the stairs at school or at my own home, or every time I smelled patisseries like the ones Seth used to make, or every time I lied down on my bed and had trouble getting up quickly.
"Why did you come back?"
"Did he decide that you weren't worth all the money anymore after you blew up like an elephant?"
"Look at her eating, as if she still has a reason to live."
"There is no such thing as a good girl, they're all bad for the good price."
They stared and they talked, but not one of them asked. I'd been their classmate my entire life without once attracting their attention, was I not even worth a question? I didn't know what I would say or if I would be able to come up with an excuse or a reason, but why couldn't they ask? It didn't matter to them how I really got pregnant or by whom, the only thing that mattered was that I was young, single, and pregnant. The "single" adjective assigned to me opening the gates to endless rumors and humor and condemning me to death, apparently.
I often re-entertained the thought of running back to the streets, but my recurring nightmares of Seth stopped me. Every time I walked through the door, I prayed that there would be no hallway, that there would be a long empty space that I would fall into and the ground would close in on me, hiding me from everyone, never again to be seen, but I never felt suicidal or wanted my life to end.
They had their rumors, but I knew the truth, so I couldn't see what they saw, I couldn't see something worth dying to escape from. Even though I knew the truth that I was pregnant by my own twin sister's boyfriend – the truth which would've asserted their conviction of me and made them want me to want to die all the more, I didn't. To me, I was still me; I didn't know any more about boys or life than I had a few months before, I wasn't wiser or smarter or more experienced, I didn't feel more involved in the world. To me, I was still the silly, innocent, little girl whose biggest problem was how to pass the semester. In my head, I was still as innocent and good and reserved as I'd always been. Maybe a part of me was still rejecting reality and my entire pregnancy, but I think it was the security in the image I had of myself that kept me alive and made their words do all sorts of things to me, but not kill me.
While I still wanted to live, I couldn't understand why everybody else didn't want me to.
What had I done that was so different from what they'd done? Regardless of all the rumors, the only thing they could've been sure of was that I spent time with someone of the opposite sex. Hadn't they all? I couldn't understand why people talked about it, were proud of it, excited about it, so long as it was just words, but couldn't bear it being anything more. I couldn't understand how everybody did it and life depended on it, but any little evidence - be it a picture or a baby - was worth ending someone's life over. It made no sense to me. I hadn't done anything different from them to get pregnant, and I knew of a few who'd gotten abortions to avoid my situation, so they'd been pregnant too, even if just for days. Were they better than me just because nobody else knew? Was I the worst of them all for accepting my mistake – which wouldn't have been considered a mistake had there been no evidence of it – and accepting the consequences?
I tried to avoid everyone, but I wasn't allowed not to eat. Patty had given me medicine because my sickness shouldn't have persisted that far into the pregnancy, and I couldn't swallow it on an empty stomach. I started hiding and eating in the restroom. I got the food with me from home to avoid going into the cafeteria altogether. The teachers, however, had no sympathy for their previously-favorite student and wouldn't let me stay in the classroom any longer than the bell, so, despite my best attempts, I still had to pass people in the hall.
I was walking towards my next class, my head to the ground as usual, when a pair of shoes stopped before me. I tried to step to the side, but they followed my every move until I took a deep breath and looked up, already knowing who it was.
I hugged my books tighter to me.
Emmet had practically been hunting me. He dumped me because I was "too good" and wouldn't sleep with him, I disappeared for a few weeks and came back pregnant for his amusement. When I heard a rumor that I could never repeat, not even to myself, I knew that it had come from his imagination. He never let me go until I looked up at him, met his eyes and saw his smug smirk that was meaner than anything he could've said or done, but it wasn't enough. He only let me look down after seeing his face and knowing how much he was enjoying what he was doing as a dispensary for his disappointed efforts with me.
"You guys wanna see something hilarious?" He asked loudly after I'd dropped my gaze, and I knew a crowd had already formed, they always did the moment he stopped me. Before anybody could respond, he slapped my books down and they fell from my arms to the floor in a loud thud. "Now, watch her try to get them." He laughed, and many laughs echoed his all around me.
I looked at my books from over my round stomach and felt the tears burning my eyes. I couldn't bend normally that far in my pregnancy, I would have to slowly try to go down on my knees and pick them up sideways, but I needed to support my weight on something to get back up, like a wall or the lockers, but he'd dropped them right in the middle of the hall.
My lips and arms quivered. I had to get to class, I didn't like going in late and giving everybody more reason to stare at me or the teachers a good excuse to take their s
hot at embarrassing me, but I knew he wouldn't let me go until I'd given them all a good laugh.
I sighed and began to bend, hoping that maybe my arms had miraculously grown longer, but before I could, a new set of shoes broke through the circle surrounding me, and somebody else bent down, gathering my books swiftly before standing up.
Chad held my books out for me. If there was anything harder to look at than Emmet's arrogant face, it was Chad's confused and hesitant expression. I couldn't look at him. I turned on my heels and walked away. I hid in the girls' restroom for a few minutes, promising myself that I would cry later and eat ice cream when I got home if I could just make it for a couple of hours more.
When I made it to class, my books were already set on my regular desk even though Chad didn't share that one with me.
*
I was pouring a glass of milk late at night when Joss walked into the kitchen and started pacing around me, taking deep breaths and sighing them out. She often did that; rushed towards me when she saw me alone and tried to talk to me, but eventually decided against it and walked away.
"Okay, Okay," she started. "I know I'm not supposed to bother you or ask you anything that could, but I can't keep this in anymore, so just try not to get bothered or Patty will kill me."
I set my milk on the counter. It was the first time my sister had talked to me since I came back home from the hospital.
"I've been doing a lot of thinking," she went on. "Emmet broke up with you because you wouldn't sleep with him, or anyone for that matter, which means that you were still a virgin back then." She wasn't looking at me, but repeating what she knew to herself until she got to what she didn't. "You didn't have a boyfriend and you never went out anywhere without me or Chelsea, so it didn't make any sense. Then, I did some calculations and it hit me, the only night you did go out and neither one of us was around you, was that party you let me doll you up for. Remember? The only party you've ever been to?"
My heart seemed to pump the milk back up my throat. Could she have figured it all out?
